JIM 

210 
L7 


FIRST  SERIES.  NO.  37  NOVEMBER,  1920 

UNIVERSITY  OF  IOWA 
STUDIES 


STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

VOLUME  VII  NUMBER  3 

The  Influence  of  Jeremy  Bentham 
on  English  Democratic  Development 

BY 

HILDA  G.  LUNDIN,  PH.  D. 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE  UNIVERSITY,  IOWA  CITY 


monthly    throughout   the   year^       Entered   at   the   post   office   at   Iowa    City.   Iowa,   aa 
second  class  matter.     Acceptance  for  mailing  at  special  rate  of  postage  provided 
for  in  Section   1103,  Act  of  October  3,   1917.  authorized  on  July  8,   1918. 


UNIVERSITY  OF,  IOWA  STUDIES 
IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 


A.  M.  SCHLESINGER,  Editor 
C.  M.  CASE,  Advisory  Editor     J.  VAN  DER  ZEE,  Advisory  Editor 


VOLUME  VII  NUMBER  3 


The  Influence  of  Jeremy  Bentham 
on  English  Democratic  Developmen 


BY 


HILDA  G.  LUNDIN,  PH.  D. 
II 


PUBLISHED  BY  THE  UNIVERSITY,  IOWA  CITY 


EDITOR'S    INTRODUCTION 5 

I  JEREMY  BENTHAM  :  A  BRIEF  SKETCH  OF  HIS  LIFE  AND 

WORKS    7 

II  BENTHAM  'a  FIGHT  FOR  POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 19 

III  BENTHAM  'a  FIGHT  FOR  POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY  (CON- 

CLUDED)     26 

IV  LEGAL  AND  JUDICIAL  REFORM 36 

V  SOME  INFLUENCES  OF  BENTHAM  IN  ENGLAND'S  SOCIAL 

DEVELOPMENT  44 

VI  BENTHAM 's  FRIENDS  AND  ENGLISH  REFORM 62 

BIBLIOGRAPHY  .     83 


(3) 


EDITOR'S  INTRODUCTION 

In  this  monograph  Dr.  Lundin  has  undertaken  to  trace  Jeremy 
Bentham's  influence  on  the  political,  legal,  and  social  develop- 
ment of  England.  Only  very  incidentally  is  she  concerned  with 
the  remoter  reaches  of  his  influence  in  other  lands  although  she 
makes  it  clear  that  his  active  and  fertile  mind  received  constant 
inspiration  from  his  study  of  the  great  experiment  in  popular 
government  that  was  being  carried  on  in  America.  Indeed  many 
of  the  ideals  of  political  democracy  for  which  Bentham  strove 
were  already  incorporated  in  the  form  of  statutes  and  constitu- 
tions in  the  United  States.  Therefore  it  is  not  surprising  that  his 
doctrines  were  chiefly  influential  in  America  in  the  field  of 
juristic  science. 

Judge  John  F.  Dillon  has  pointed  out  that  important  changes 
in  modes  of  judicial  procedure  and  conceptions  of  legal  education 
in  America  had  their  inception  in  the  writings  of  this  "teacher 
of  teachers."  To  men  imbued  with  Bentham's  ideas  must  also 
be  ascribed  the  extent  to  which  codes  of  civil  and  criminal  proce- 
dure have  been  adopted  throughout  this  country.  The  influence 
of  his  doctrines  on  the  distinguished  American  jurist  Edward 
Livingston  is  significant  in  this  connection.  Pecuniary  difficulties 
caused  Livingston  to  leave  his  ancestral  home  in  New  York  in 
1804  and  take  up  his  residence  in  New  Orleans,  then  recently 
acquired  from  France  as  a  part  of  Louisiana  Territory.  The 
legal  system  of  the  territory  was  based  upon  Roman,  French  and 
Spanish  law;  and  annexation  by  the  United  States  necessitated 
the  introduction  of  trial  by  jury  and  other  features  of  the 
English  common  law.  Livingston  was  appointed  by  the  legisla- 
ture to  draw  up  a  provisional  code  of  judicial  procedure  based 
mainly  on  the  existing  law  of  the  territory;  and  this  code  was 
adopted  by  the  legislature  in  1805.  Sixteen  years  later  he  was 

(5) 


chosen  by  the  legislature  to  draft  a  new  code  of  criminal  law  and 
procedure  for  the  state.  In  the  execution  of  this  task  he  prepared 
a  comprehensive  Code  of  Crimes  and  Punishments,  of  Procedure, 
of  Evidence,  and  of  Reform  and  Prison  Discipline.  Each  code 
was  accompanied  with  an  elaborate  prefatory  report;  and 
although  the  fruits  of  his  labors  were  not  enacted  by  the 
Louisiana  legislature,  they  were  published  widespread  through- 
out America  and  Europe.  Chancellor  Kent  declared  that  Liv- 
ingston had  "done  more  in  giving  precision,  specification, 
accuracy,  and  moderation  to  the  system  of  crimes  and  punish- 
ment than  any  other  legislator  of  the  age  .  .  .  ' 

In  an  interesting  correspondence  with  Bentham  in  1829,  Liv- 
ingston acknowledged  that  he  had  received  his  first  impulse  to 
the  preparation  of  a  comprehensive  system  of  penal  legislation 
from  Bentham 's  works,  which  had  appeared  in  the  French 
edition  of  Dumont  in  1802.  ' '  The  perusal  of  your  works, ' '  wrote 
Livingston  to  Bentham,  "first  gave  method  to  my  ideas,  and 
taught  me  to  consider  legislation  as  a  science  governed  by  certain 
principles,  applicable  to  all  its  different  branches,  instead  of  an 
occasional  exercise  of  its  powers,  called  forth  only  on  particular 
occasions  without  relation  to  or  connection  with  each  other." 
Livingston's  labors  earned  for  him  Sir  Henry  Maine's  encomium 
of  "the  first  legal  genius  of  modern  times." 

Dr.  Lundin's  monograph  was  originally  prepared  under  the 
direction  of  Professor  Harry  Grant  Plum  of  the  Department  of 
History  and  has  been  revised  for  publication  in  the  present  series. 

ARTHUR  M.  SCHLESINGEB. 


CHAPTER  I 

JEREMY  BENTHAM :    A  BRIEF  SKETCH  OF  HIS  LIFE 

AND  WORKS 

Jeremy  Bentham  lived  during  the  last  half  of  the  eighteenth 
century  and  the  first  third  of  the  nineteenth  century,  a  period 
during  which  the  ideas  generated  by  the  French  Revolution  were 
causing  governmental  reaction  in  England.  Bentham  was  born 
February  15,  1748  in  a  well-to-do,  middle-class  home  located  on 
Red  Lion  street,  Houndsditch,  London.  His  mother,  Alicia  Grove 
Bentham,  the  daughter  of  an  Andover  tradesman,  was  a  gentle, 
refined  lady.  His  father,  Jeremiah  Bentham,  was  a  scrivener 
and  clerk  to  the  Worshipful  Company  of  Scriveners.  As  a  child, 
Jeremy  was  of  delicate  health,  naturally  serious  and  studious. 
Very  early,  brilliant  mental  power,  aptitude  for  learning,  and 
original  thinking  were  manifested.  Anecdotes  of  his  babyhood 
and  childhood,  illustrative  of  unusual  precocity,  are  numerous 
and  interesting.1  Latin  and  Greek  he  learned  upon  his  father's 
knee,  beginning  their  study  at  the  age  of  three  years.2  When  he 
was  but  six  or  seven  years  old  a  Frenchman,  La  Combe,  came  to 
live  in  the  home  as  his  private  tutor.3  The  child  easily  and  quick- 
ly learned  the  French  language,  and  soon  read,  with  keen  delight, 
Fenelon's  Telemachus  in  the  original.  He  was  so  deeply  im- 
pressed by  this  book  that  it  influenced  all  his  later  life.  Referring 
to  its  reading  from  the  plane  of  mature  years  he  stated  that  the 
awakening  of  his  moral  life  was  to  be  credited  to  it  and  he  also 
claimed  that  the  first  dawning  in  his  mind  of  the  principles  of 
utility  might  be  traced  to  it.4  Reading  was  always  a  pleasure 
for  the  boy,  but  prior  to  La  Combe 's  coming  his  parents  objected 
to  the  reading  of  books  that  afforded  amusement.  Parental  dis- 
approval being  overcome,  Jeremy  read  many  books  that  indicate 
for  one  so  young  a  remarkable  range  of  interest  and  intellectual 

iBowring,  The  Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  X.  p.  7;  Atkinson,  Jeremy  Bentham. 
pp  9ff. 

2  Montague,  Bentham's  Fragment  on  Government,  p.  1. 
8  Bowring;.  op.  cit.,  X,  p.  9. 
4  Ibid.,  X,  p.  10. 

(7) 


8         IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

development.  Among  them  were  Burnet's  Theory  of  the  Earth, 
Mandeville's  Fable  of  the  Bees,  Cave's  Lives  of  the  Apostles, 
Stow's  Chronicles,  Plutarch's  Lives,  Richardson's  Clarissa 
Harlow,  Swift's  Gulliver's  Travels,  and  Voltaire's  Life  of 
Charles  XII  and  Candide*  Due  to  his  vivid  imagination,  Jeremy 
usually  visualized  himself  as  the  hero  of  the  book,  lived  among 
the  characters  portrayed,  and  longed  to  aid  the  unfortunate  ones. 

In  the  year  1755,  when  he  was  but  a  little  past  seven  years  of 
age,  Jeremy  Bentham  entered  Westminster  School.  Physically 
he  was  not  able  to  engage  in  the  usual  sports.  Sensitive  in  the 
extreme  he  could  not  brook  the  rude  actions  of  the  other  boys. 
The  teachers  being  deficient  in  ability,  idle,  and  indifferent  were 
not  inspiring.  On  account  of  these  conditions  the  school  was 
always  remembered  by  Bentham  as  a  wretched  place  for  instruc- 
tion in  few  useful  things.6  Studious  and  tractable,  he  performed 
the  tasks  assigned  to  him  in  such  manner  as  never  to  suffer 
punishment  from  his  teachers.  He  made  rapid  progress,  having 
been  well-grounded  in  the  languages  before  entering  Westminster 
School,  and  was  prepared  at  the  youthful  age  of  twelve  to  enroll 
in  Oxford  University. 

Upon  matriculation  day  at  Oxford  a  real  and  grievous  trouble 
presented  itself  to  Bentham  in  the  requirement  that  the  Thirty- 
nine  Articles  be  signed.  Young  as  he  was  he  refused  to  sign 
the  document  with  whose  contents  he  was  not  fully  acquainted. 
After  he  had  carefully  examined  the  Articles  he  said :  "  In  some 
of  them  no  meaning  at  all  could  I  find;  in  others,  no  meaning 
but  one  which,  in  my  eyes,  was  but  too  plainly  irreconcilable 
either  to  reason  or  to  scripture.  Communicating  my  distress  to 
some  of  my  fellow  collegiates,  I  found  them  sharers  in  it.  Upon 
inquiry  it  was  found  that  among  the  fellows  of  the  college  there 
was  one,  to  whose  office  it  belonged,  among  other  things,  to  remove 
all  such  scruples.  We  repaired  to  him  with  fear  and  trembling. 
His  answer  was  cold;  and  the  substance  of  it  was — that  it  was 
not  for  uninformed  youths,  such  as  we,  to  presume  to  set  up  our 
private  judgments  against  a  public  one  formed  by  some  of  the 
holiest  as  well  as  best  and  wisest  men  that  ever  lived.  I  signed : 
but  by  the  view  I  found  myself  forced  to  take  of  the  whole  busi- 

5  Ibid.,  X,  p.  22  ;  Montague,  op.  cit.,  p.  2 ;  Stephen,  The  English  Utilitarians,   1,  p. 
171 ;  Atkinson,  op.  cit.,  p.  12  ;  Biographical  Dictionary,  IV,  p.  269. 
«  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  X.  pp.  SOff. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT      9 

ness,  such  an  impression  was  made,  as  will  never  depart  from 
me  but  with  life."7  Writing  many  years  after  of  this  Bentham 
stated  that  the  only  lesson  a  young  man  learns  from  such  a 
requirement  is  a  lesson  of  perjury.8 

Bentham 's  tutor  at  Oxford  was  a  cross,  gloomy  man  named 
Jefferson.  He  required  his  pupil  to  read  Tully's  Orations  which 
he  had  memorized  before  entering  the  University.  Other  studies, 
as  geography,  logic,  and  philosophy,  were  presented  in  such  a 
manner  as  to  be  of  little  value,  for,  generally  speaking,  the  tutors 
and  the  professors  at  Oxford  were  incapable  and  inert,  passing 
their  mornings  in  dull  meaningless  routine  and  their  evenings  in 
card-playing.  The  profligacy  of  some  of  the  teachers  and  the 
moroseness  and  insipidity  of  others  were  wholly  at  variance  with 
the  ideas  of  Bentham.9  Being  undersized  Bentham  was  fre- 
quently teased  by  his  more  robust  mates  and  was  constantly 
annoyed  by  their  unkind  treatment.  He  took  little  part  in  the 
fishing  and  the  hunting  diversions  offered  during  University 
days,  for  they  were  not  pleasures  to  him.  Furthermore,  due  to 
his  father's  ideas,  the  boy's  clothing  was  so  different  from  that 
of  the  other  students  that  he  was  made  to  feel  extremely  uncom- 
fortable.10 Completing  the  prescribed  course,  Bentham  received 
Ms  degree  in  1763. 

The  elder  Bentham  had  destined  Jeremy  for  the  profession  of 
law  as  the  foundation  upon  which  he  was  to  rise  to  advanced 
position  in  his  country.  The  ambitious  parent  had  concluded 
that  the  son  who  surpassed  schoolmates  and  classmates  in  educa- 
tional attainments  would  be  capable  of  serving,  worthily  and 
honorably,  his  country  in  a  public  career.11  The  youth  knew  his 
father's  plans  for  him  and  was  not  opposed  to  the  work  mapped 
out.  Therefore,  soon  after  graduating  he  began  to  live  at 
Lincoln's  Inn.  However,  as  he  studied  and  observed,  he  began 
to  display  a  tendency  toward  untrammeled  thinking  that  he  was 
powerless  to  check  had  he  desired  to  do  so. 

In  order  to  understand  Bentham 's  intellectual  development 
while  at  Lincoln's  Inn  Field's,  mention  must  be  made  of  the 


7  Ibid.,  X,  p.  87. 

8  Ibid.,  II.  p.  210. 

a  Ibid.,  X,  pp.  37ff. 

10  Ibid.,  X.  pp.  38ff. 

11  Stephen.  The  English  Utilitarians,  I,  p.  174. 


10        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

influence  made  upon  his  mind  by  the  writings  of  Helvetius, 
Hume,  and  Priestly.12  These  three  men  belonged  to  the  eigh- 
teenth century  but  in  their  writings  they  advanced  ideas  in 
morals  and  philosophy  peculiar  to  themselves  and  in  advance  of 
their  time.  They  displayed  a  new  understanding  of  existing 
social  conditions  and  sought  to  comprehend  the  desires  and  the 
aspirations  of  mankind.  They  urged  the  consideration  of  one 
individual  for  another  upon  the  basis  of  utility. 

Helvetius  (1715-1771),  a  Frenchman,  versatile  and  keen,  wrote 
both  poetry  and  prose.  In  a  poem  entitled  La  Bonheur  he 
developed  the  idea  that  the  only  way  to  obtain  true  happiness  is 
to  make  the  interest  of  one  the  interest  of  all.18  Helvetius  ex- 
plained further  that  self-interest  is  the  sole  means  of  judgment, 
action,  and  affection  because  it  is  founded  on  the  love  of  pleasure 
and  the  fear  of  pain;  that  self-sacrifice  is  endured  because  the 
sensation  of  pleasure  resulting  is  greater  than  the  pain  accom- 
panying sacrifice.  David  Hume  (1711-1776)  emphasized  the 
need  of  studying  human  nature  as  such,  as  the  only  means  of 
determining  the  principles  which  regulate  understanding,  excite 
sentiments,  and  cause  blame  or  praise  of  conduct.14  Priestley 
(1733-1804),  a  dissenting  preacher,  published  in  1768  an  Essay 
on  Government  in  which  he  stated  "the  good  and  happiness  of 
the  members,  that  is  the  majority  of  the  members,  of  any  state, 
is  the  great  standard  by  which  everything  relating  to  that  state 
must  finally  be  determined."  Two  years  after  its  publication 
the  essay  fell  into  the  hands  of  Bentham,  who  upon  completing 
the  reading  exclaimed  " Eureka"  with  as  much  vim  as  the 
mathematician  of  old.  The  reading  of  this  essay  caused  Bentham 
to  say:  "Priestley  was  the  first  (unless  it  was  Beccaria)  who 
taught  my  lips  to  pronounce  this  sacred  truth ;  that  the  greatest 
happiness  of  the  greatest  number  is  the  foundation  of  morals 
and  legislation. '  '16  Thus  at  the  early  age  of  twenty-two  Bentham 
fixed  upon  the  phrase,  "the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 


12  Edinburgh    Review,   LXXVIII,   pp.    469-474. 

iSThilly,  Tke  History  of  Philosophy,  p.  832.  This  thought  was  not  new  with  Hel- 
vetius for  Joseph  Butler  (1692-1752)  had  set  forth  the  claim  that  it  is  as  natural 
for  an  individual  to  seek  the  good  of  his  neighbor  as  his  own  happiness  ;  and  Francis 
Hutcheson  (1694-1747)  is  credited  with  originating  the  phrase  "the  greatest  hap- 
piness of  the  greatest  number." 

14  Ibid.,  pp.  846ff. 

16  Bowring,   op.    eit.,   X,   p.   142. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    11 

number, ' '  as  the  fundamental  principle  of  his  reasoning. 

The  young  man  living  at  Lincoln's  Inn  perceived  that  the 
ethics  of  the  legal  profession  were  of  a  low  standard.  Entirely 
incompatible  with  his  own  sense  of  justice  were  the  practices  of 
the  professional  lawyers  there  observed.  He  could  not  suffer 
himself  to  be  a  lawyer  of  such  ilk  as  England  then  had.  This 
was  clearly  shown  by  his  advising  the  first  litigants  who  came 
to  him  to  settle  their  differences  and  so  avoid  costs.17  Preventing 
court  proceedings  was  not  calculated  to  build  up  the  career  that 
the  father  had  planned  for  the  son. 

As  a  result  of  listening  to  Blackstone's  lectures  Bentham 
wrote  The  Fragment  on  Government  and  published  it  anonym- 
ously in  1776.  In  order  to  lessen  his  father's  disappointment  in 
him,  Jeremy  told  him  what  he  had  been  writing,  exacting  at 
the  same  time  a  pledge  of  secrecy.  Upon  publication  its  author- 
ship became  the  subject  of  much  discussion,  Mansfield,  Dunning 
and  Camden  being  named  as  the  writer;  the  book  sold  read- 
ily. Hearing  that  the  names  of  such  celebrities  were  being  con- 
nected with  the  essay,  the  elder  Bentham  broke  his  promise,  and 
revealed  the  name  of  the  author.  Then  because  the  writer  was 
no  one  of  prominence  the  sale  of  the  book  stopped.  However,  as 
a  benefit  to  the  young  writer,  it  brought  to  his  Lincoln's  Inn 
garret  a  visitor  from  England's  peerage,  Lord  Shelburne,18 
From  the  initial  meeting  of  these  two  men  in  1781  a  friendship 
of  vital  worth  to  both  was  formed.  Soon  Shelburne  extended 
to  the  obscure  writer  an  invitation  to  make  a  long  visit  at  his 
home  Bowood.  Acceptance  of  the  invitation  proved  to  be  Ben- 
tham's  introduction  to  a  delightful  and  notable  company.  Prior 
to  this  visit  The  Fragment's  author  had  met  with  all  kinds  of 
disappointments  and  rebukes;  but  the  geniality  and  kindness  of 
Lord  Shelburne  raised  him  from  humiliation  and  encouraged 
him  to  go  forward  with  the  schemes  for  mankind's  advancement 
upon  which  he  had  already  begun  to  think.19  Guests  met  at 
Bowood  during  his  first  visit  (1781)  were  Lord  Camden,  the 
Younger  Pitt,  and  Dunning.  At  a  later  visit  (1788)  he  met 
Romilly  and  Dumont,  both  of  whom  became  his  warm  friends. 


17  /6td.,  X,  p.  61. 

18  Ibid.,  1  .p.  248. 
i9/6»d.,   X,  p.   116. 
Atkinson,  op.  cit.,  p.  46. 


12        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

It  is  as  the  author  of  many  manuscripts,  as  the  compiler  of 
really  great  works  upon  legislation,  as  a  constant  agitator  for 
reforms  in  various  lines  that  Bentham  busied  himself  throughout 
his  long  lifetime.  During  a  visit  to  Russia  made  from  1785  to 
1788  he  wrote  an  essay  entitled  Defence  of  Usury,  which,  ' '  a  gem 
of  the  finest  water, ' '  has  been  considered  the  best  treatise  on  the 
subject.20  At  this  time,  too,  a  scheme  for  prison  reform  began  to 
receive  Bentham 's  attention  and  upon  his  return  to  England  he 
devoted  time,  means,  and  unwonted  energy  to  carrying  it  out. 

The  year  1789  is  noteworthy  because  of  the  publication  of  The 
Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation.  The 
manuscript  of  this  work  was  printed  as  early  as  1780,  but  Ben- 
tham intended  to  withhold  it  from  the  public  until  the  larger 
work  he  had  in  mind  should  be  completed.  His  friend  Wilson 
influenced  him  to  have  it  published  because  of  the  issuing  of 
Paley's  Principles  of  Moral  and  Political  Philosophy.  Wilson 
said  Paley's  book  contained  such  close  similarity  to  Bentham 's 
ideas  that  it  seemed  as  if  the  author  might  have  read  Bentham 's 
manuscript.  Wilson  was  fearful  lest  later  publication  by  Bent- 
ham  should  give  rise  to  the  charge  of  borrowing  ideas  from 
Paley.21 

Bentham  lived  from  1788  to  1792  at  an  obscure  farm  place  near 
Hendon,  four  miles  beyond  Highgate.22  In  this  retired  place  he 
lived  a  sort  of  hermit  life,  seeing  nobody,  reading  nothing,  and 
writing  books  that  nobody  read.23  Upon  his  father's  death  in 
1792  Jeremy  Bentham  inherited  the  home  in  Queen's  Square 
Place,  Westminster,  and  he  established  himself  there  permanent- 
ly. Henceforth  he  continued  his  activities  in  behalf  of  reform  in 
a  pleasing  environment. 

Dumont,  scholarly  and  capable,  succeeded  in  obtaining  Ben- 
tham 's  permission  to  edit  his  works,  and  in  1802,  he  brought  out 
in  the  French  language  three  volumes  which  indicate  the  great- 
ness of  Bentham 's  field  of  interest  at  that  time.  Atkinson  says : 
"Many  a  salutary  modification  of  our  system  of  jurisprudence 
may  be  traced  to  ideas  enshrined  and  developed  in  these 

20  Bowring,  op.  cit..  X,  pp.  176ff. 
Atkinson,  op.  cit.,  p.  83. 

21  Bowring,  op.  cit..  X,  pp.   163ff. 

22  Ibid.,  X,  p.  248,  p.  823. 

23  Atkinson,  op.  cit..  p.   112. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    13 

volumes."24  The  editor,  Dumont,  said  that  the  plans  developed 
in  Traites  de  Legislation  are  applicable  to  a  monarchy  or  a  re- 
public ;  that  the  rulers  are  urged  to  ' '  Study  the  remedy  for  the 
ills  that  afflict  your  people.25 

Chrestomathia  is  the  title  Bentham  gave  to  two  volumes  begun 
in  1816.  The  name  made  up  of  two  Greek  words  signifies  "con- 
ducive to  useful  learning."  These  two  volumes,  presenting 
Bentham 's  scheme  for  education,  developed  a  system  quite  differ- 
ent from  that  employed  in  the  English  schools.  In  natural, 
pleasing  surroundings,  through  the  direction  of  competent  teach- 
ers, Chrestomathia  aimed  at  a  broad,  useful  development  of 
mental  ability  that  would  fit  the  adult  for  an  enlarged  field  of 
activity.  It  was  a  complete  system  of  coordinated  subjects  and 
plans.  "The  actual  curriculum  proposed  for  the  higher  Lan- 
casterian  schools  was  largely  borrowed  from  it."26 

The  Constitutional  Code,  which  is  the  most  complete,  the  most 
comprehensive,  the  most  mature  of  all  Bentham 's  works,  was 
prepared  during  the  years  from  1820  to  1832.  Its  aim  was  to  set 
forth  a  rational  constitution  and  a  rational  system  of  legislation 
harmonious  with  the  doctrine  of  the  "greatest  happiness  of  the 
greatest  number."  The  English  reformers  were  deeply  im- 
pressed by  it  for  they  recognized  the  labor  and  the  skill  requisite 
to  produce  it,  and  also  understood  that  there  was  real  worth  in 
the  code. 

An  extract  from  the  Westminster  Review  under  date  of  1830 
conveys  in  well- worded  terms  the  place  conceded  to  the  in- 
defatigable writer.  "A  few  years  ago  Jeremy  Bentham  was  in 
Paris.  Never  did  a  noble  countenance,  or  a  more  venerable  head, 
present  to  the  eye  the  material  type  of  loftier  virtues  or  a  purer 
soul ;  nor  was  so  prodigious  a  reputation  ever  more  justly  merited. 
Bentham  should  not  only  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  profoundest 
lawyers  that  ever  lived,  but  as  one  of  those  philosophers,  who 
have  done  most  towards  the  enlightening  of  the  human  race  and 
for  the  advancement  of  liberty  in  his  own  times. ' '" 

Bentham  did  not  especially  concern  himself  with  politics  dur- 
ing the  first  half  of  his  life  for  he  was  not  a  party  man.28  The 

24  Ibid.,  p.   188. 

25  Ibid.,  p.   138. 

26  Ibid.,  p.  173,  note. 

27  Westminister  Review,  XIV,    (1837),  p.  354. 

28  Atkinson,  of.  tit.,  p.  28. 


14        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

friendship  of  Lord  Shelburne  led  him  to  give  attention  to  pol- 
itics and  in  1790  he  had  a  strong  desire  to  become  a  member  of 
Parliament.  This  arose  from  a  misunderstanding  on  his  part, 
for  Bentham  claimed,  without  warrant,  that  Shelburne  had 
caused  him  to  expect  one  of  the  Shelburns  amily  places.29  At 
the  age  of  twenty-six  Bentham  refers  to  himself  as  being  one 
whose  love  for  his  country  should  be  witness  for  him  against 
misruling  men.80  At  the  age  of  fifty-four  he  had  personal 
acquaintance  with  many  eminent  politicians  and  philanthropists. 

A  development  of  democratic  views  is  first  evidenced  in  his 
Draught  of  a  Code  for  the  Organization  of  a  Judicial  Establish- 
ment, published  in  1790.  The  influence  of  the  French  Revolution 
upon  him  is  made  plain  by  Macaulay  who  wrote  of  Bentham  as 
an  ' '  illustrious  conservative  reformer. '  '8l  In  the  years  prior  to 
1809  Bentham  reached  the  conclusion  that  there  was  great  need 
for  reform  in  Parliament  and  at  the  age  of  sixty  he  began  to 
give  active  support  to  such  reform.82  At  this  time  he  was  widely 
known.  Governmental  authorities  in  Russia,  Spain,  France, 
Germany  and  America  advocated  the  employment  of  Benthamic 
doctrines.38  "Even  in  England  he  is  often  mentioned  in  books 
and  in  Parliament.  "34  "  Meantime  I  am  here  scribbling  on  in  my 
hermitage,  never  seeing  anybody  but  for  some  special  reason, 
always  bearing  relation  to  the  service  of  mankind. '  '3S 

Growing  into  a  closer  contact  with  English  politics,  Bentham 
may  be  classified  not  as  a  Tory,  nor  a  Jacobin,  nor  a  paralyzed 
Whig,  but  as  a  philanthropic  agitator.38  Hence  he  became  a 
radical  reformer  and  propagandist.  By  1818  his  influence  in 
public  affairs  became  important  through  the  efforts  of  Romilly, 
Mill,  Wilson,  and  others  who  carried  to  the  outer  world  the 
philosophizing  of  Bentham 's  study.  Through  an  extensive  cor- 
respondence his  influence  reached  European  and  American  coun- 
tries from  which  in  return  came  letters  of  gratitude  and 
admiration.87  As  the  movement  for  reform  progressed,  the 

29  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  X.  p.  229. 

30  Ibid.,  X,  p.  72. 
SlAtkinson,  op.  cit.,  p.  104. 

82  Bowring,  op.  cit..  Ill,  p  .435. 

33  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I,  pp.  209flf. 

34  Ibid.,  I,  p.  210. 

35  Bowring,   op.   cit.,   X,   p.   458. 

36  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  210. 

37  Bowring,  op.  cit.,   X,  539. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT     15 

"utilitarians"  organized  and  entered  the  field  of  politics  as  a 
distinct  body.  Needing  an  organ  for  the  dissemination  of  their 
ideas,  the  Westminster  Review  was  started  and  Bentham  financed 
it.88 

Bentham,  who  is  to  be  credited  with  great  ability,  with  sensitive 
understanding  of  human  nature,  with  remarkable  knowledge  of 
the  wrongs  in  existing  legislation,  and  far  reaching  schemes  for 
constructive  reform,  was  not  without  his  limitations.  Comment- 
ing on  these  limitations  Sidgwick  mentions  "his  exaggerated 
reliance  on  his  own  method,  his  ignorant  contempt  for  the  past, 
and  his  intolerant  misinterpretation  of  all  that  opposed  him  in 
the  present"  as  salient  defects.39  Again,  Bentham  regarded 
nations  and  men  as  being  mechanical.  The  former  were  to  him 
simply  aggregates  of  men,  the  latter  machines  capable  of  being 
regulated  much  as  a  watch  is  regulated.  Had  he  understood  that 
nations  are  not  aggregates  of  men  but  complex  organisms  in 
which  each  member  receives  as  he  gives  of  himself  to  the  whole, 
he  would  have  enlarged  his  achievement.40  Because  romance 
entered  but  slightly  into  his  life,  and  because  much  of  his  time 
was  spent  strenuously  writing  in  comparative  retirement,  he 
lacked  now  and  then  in  suavity  of  statement.  This  is  evidenced 
by  the  replies  he  sent  to  Madame  de  Stael  and  Mr.  Edgeworth 
when  they  expressed  a  wish  to  meet  him.41 

In  1820  a  young  man  by  the  name  of  John  Bowring  was  intro- 
duced to  Bentham.  The  two  men,  aged  respectively  twenty-eight 
and  seventy-two,  became  the  warmest  of  friends.  Bowring  spent 
much  time  in  the  next  twelve  years  in  the  elder  man 's  companion- 
ship, and  by  reason  of  this  intimacy  became  especially  well 
qualified  to  write  of  Bentham  and  his  work.  After  Bentham 's 
death  Bowring  undertook  the  task  of  editing  the  correspondence 
and  manuscripts  bequeathed  to  him.  As  a  result  c  :  iiis  work, 
eleven  volumes,  in  which  are  contained  a  biography  Bentham 
and  many  of  his  writings,  appeared  in  1843.42.  A  number  of 
manuscripts,  packed  away  in  more  than  eighty  neatly  labeled 


38  Stephen,   op.  cit.,  I,  pp.  223ff. 

39  Sidgwick,  Miscellaneous  Essays  and  Addre-sses,  p.   137. 

40  Montague,  op.  cit.,  pp.  45ff. 

41  Bowring,   op.   cit.,    XI,   p.   79. 

42  The   Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,   published   under  the   direction   of   hia   executor, 
John  Bowring. 


16        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

boxes,  and  a  number  of  portfolios  are  still  stored  at  University 
College. 

Lessening  mental  and  physical  vigor  experienced  in  the 
summer  of  1831  caused  Bentham  to  remark  that  they  were  the 
precursors  of  his  passing  from  life.  Gradually  slackening  his 
writing  as  the  months  moved  on,  enjoying  the  association  of 
close  friends  in  Queen's  Square  Place,  keeping  in  touch  with 
current  events  till  the  last,  he  calmly,  consciously,  met  the  end 
June  6,  1832,  in  the  strength  of  his  own  philosophy,  saying  to  his 
loved  friend  when  he  thought  the  last  hour  was  near:  "I  now 
feel  that  I  am  dying:  our  care  must  be  to  minimize  pain.  Do 
not  let  any  of  the  servants  come  into  the  room,  and  keep  away 
the  youths;  it  will  be  distressing  to  them  and  they  can  be  of  no 
service.  Yet  I  must  not  be  alone :  you  will  remain  with  me  and 
you  only ;  and  then  we  shall  have  reduced  pain  to  the  least  possi- 
ble amount. '  '43 

With  a  view  to  the  advancement  of  science,  Bentham  directed 
that  his  body  should  be  dissected.  "The  skeleton,  covered  with 
the  clothes  he  commonly  wore,  and  supporting  a  waxen  effigy  of 
his  head,  is  carefully  preserved  in  the  Anatomical  Museum  of 
University  College,  London.  Across  one  knee  rests  his  favorite 
stick  'Dapple'  and  at  the  foot  of  the  figure  lies  the  skull  with 
the  white  hairs  of  the  old  man  still  clinging  to  its  surface. '  '44 

Early  in  life  Bentham  arrived  at  the  definite  philosophy  which 
governed  all  his  efforts.  It  was  developed  out  of  his  actual 
personal  contact  with  others,  combined  with  his  reading  and  his 
reasoning.  This  philosophy  was  his  doctrine  of  utility;  and 
from  the  survey  of  his  life  which  may  be  gained  from  his  written 
works,  it  was  a  strong  philosophy,  whole-heartedly  directed 
towards  the  betterment  of  man. 

Bentham  claimed  that  the  only  right  ground  of  action  is  utility 
which  he  defined  as  "that  property  in  any  object,  whereby  it 
tends  to  produce  benefit,  advantage,  pleasure,  good,  or  happiness 
(all  this  in  the  present  case  comes  to  the  same  thing)  to  prevent 
the  happening  of  mischief,  pain,  evil,  or  unhappiness  to  the  party 
whose  interest  is  considered :  if  that  party  be  the  community  in 
general,  then  the  happiness  of  the  community:  if  a  particular 


43  Bow  ring,  op.  eit~,  XI,  p. 

44  Atkinson,   op.  eit.,  p.   2C 


95. 

208. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    17 

individual,  then  the  happiness  of  the  individual."45  As  a 
principle  applicable  to  the  dealings  of  man  with  man,  utility 
"approves  or  disapproves  of  every  action  whatsoever,  according 
to  the  tendency  which  it  appears  to  have  to  augment  or  diminish 
the  happiness  of  the  party  whose  interest  is  in  question ;  or,  what 
is  the  same  thing  in  other  words,  to  promote  or  oppose  that  hap- 
piness. I  say  of  every  action  whatsoever;  and  therefore  not 
only  of  every  action  of  a  private  individual,  but  of  every  measure 
of  government."46 

Bentham,  a  pioneer  of  the  Utilitarians,  enlarged  upon  the 
doctrine  of  utility  set  forth  by  Beccaria,  Hume,  Helvetius,  and 
Priestley.  He  was  followed  by  the  Mills  and  many  others  who 
have  had  a  significant  influence  in  the  development  of  Utilitarian- 


45  A  study  of  the  writings  of  Bentham  and  of  the  relations  of  Bentham  to  his 
friends,  reveals  his  championship  of  the  doctrine  of  happiness.  He  placed  very 
strong  emphasis  upon  "the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number,"  upon  the 
surplus  of  pleasure  over  pain,  but  critics  have  had  a  tendency  to  overlook  the  real 
truth  in  Bentham's  teaching.  Burton  distinctly  states  that  misunderstanding  of 
Bentham's  opinions  was  due  to  "the  inability  of  men  to  see  sources  of  pleasure  to 
others  in  things  which  were  not  sources  of  pleasure  to  themselves." 

Bentham's  whole  life  was  undeniably  "a  rejection  of  the  more  gross  and  tangible 
object*  of  human  enjoyment :  a  recourse  to  elements  of  pleasure  and  satisfaction,  for 
which  vulgar  and  truly  selfish  minds  have  no  appreciation.  Seclusion,  temperance, 
and  hard  labour  were  preferred,  as  the  outward  and  visible  signs  of  enjoyment,  to 
popularity,  indulgence,  or  luxurious  ease ;  and  the  inward  source  of  satisfaction  was 
the  consciousness  of  doing  permanent  good  to  the  human  race." — (Burton,  Intro- 
duction, pp.  23-24.)  "Hedonism,"  as  such,  "affords  no  room  for  the  play  of  those 
finer  sentiments  about  the  good  and  the  just,  the  beauty  of  righteousness,  the  no- 
bility of  duty."  (Rogers,  Philosophy,  p.  00.)  It  is  freely  granted  that  Bentham  in 
the  exposition  of  his  principles  did  emphasize  the  measurement  of  pleasures  and 
pains,  but  his  fundamental  wish  through  it  all  was  justice.  In  the  light  of  the 
present  day  when  there  is  a  reaction  against  hedonism  it  is  a  keen  delight  to  read 
the  statements  of  Bentham  himself  and  find  in  them  a  larger  idea,  a  broader  view 
than  his  critics  have  credited  to  him.  In  his  own  words,  "an  action  may  be  con- 
sidered and  spoken  of  as  useful,  as  conducive  to  general  utility,  in  proportion  to  the 
value  of  any  pleasures  which  it  is  its  tendency  to  produce,  or  of  any  pains  which 
it  is  its  tendency  to  avert,"  we  note  more  than  simply  the  quantitative  standard  gen- 
erally ascribed  to  Bentham.  Always  promulgating  reform  in  legal,  judicial,  and  social 
lines  so  that  human  welfare  should  be  enhanced,  the  sentence  quoted  is  one  which 
presents  Bentham's  deeper  thought  relative  to  the  summum  bonum. 

In  his  discussions  and  explanations  Bentham  aimed  to  present  and  develop  plans 
whereby  legislators  might  enact  legislation  that  would  be  of  real  benefit,  not  merely 
because  of  the  happiness  as  such  that  it  would  produce,  but  because  of  the  enlarge- 
ment of  human  welfare,  the  upbuilding  of  humanity  for  humanity's  good,  that 
would  result.  "When  legislators  shall  study  the  human  heart ;  when  they  shall  show 
their  attention  to  the  different  degrees  and  different  kinds  of  sensibility,  by  limita- 
tions and  modifications  ;  these  condescensions  on  the  part  of  power  will  charm  like 
paternal  endearments." — (Bowring,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  85.) 

45  Bentham,  An  Introduction  to  the  Principles  of  Morals  and  Legislation,  p.  1. 

46  Ibid.,  p.  1. 


18        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

ism.  "The  term  Utilitarianism,  designative  of  a  philosophical 
theory  in  ethics  and  politics  is  a  very  modern  one ;  but  the  thing 
that  it  represents  is  very  old.  It  represents  interest  in  the  welfare 
of  mankind,  wedded  to  practical  efforts  to  ameliorate  the  condi- 
tions of  human  life  on  rational  principles  and  to  raise  the  masses 
through  effective  state  legislation."47  The  Utilitarian  is  stirred 
by  intellectual,  educational,  political,  ethical,  and  social  ideals 
that  tend  to  the  "greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number." 
Individual  well-being  is  not  isolated  for  each  is  linked  with  all 
with  whom  he  comes  in  contact,  and  the  welfare  of  each,  being 
made  up  of  all  the  elements  that  in  their  sum  total  form  an 
individual's  happiness,  is  utility.48 

Bentham's  philosophy  was,  and  is,  a  working  creed,  possessing 
working  power.  Directing  all  the  labors  of  his  life  to  its 
propagation  he  may  be  ranked  as  a  leader  in  measures  promulgat- 
ed for  the  nation's  or  the  individual's  well-being.  His  friends 
and  contemporaries  knew  that  he  was  in  advance  of  his  time, 
that  governmental  powers  would  not  yield  to  measures  adverse 
to  existing  conditions.  However,  reforms  which  have  materially 
aided  England  during  the  past  century  prove  that  fulness  of 
thought  and  the  passage  of  time  were  needed  to  develop  the  en- 
lightenment favorable  to  change. 


*7  Davidson,  Political  Thought  in  England,  pp.  7ff. 
48  Ibid.,  pp.   lOff. 


CHAPTER  II 

BENTHAM'S  FIGHT  FOE  POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 

The  English  people  of  the  eighteenth  century  as  the  inheritors 
of  the  English  government  did  not  question  the  existence  of 
error  in  their  constitution  or  its  administration.  But  they 
revered  their  sovereign,  respected  the  intangible,  unwritten  law 
of  their  land,  and  did  not  contemplate  altering  their  government. 
The  two  classes  of  people,  landed  gentry  and  tradesmen,  held 
respectively  the  positions  of  the  governing  and  the  governed. 
Apparently  this  was  good  and  proper  and  neither  class  anticipat- 
ed change.  However,  the  governed,  by  a  process  of  evolution, 
were  making  advances  through  the  growing  importance  of  indus- 
try and  trade  and  their  increasing  influence  in  public  affairs. 
This  progress  was  facilitated  by  their  psychological  fitness  and 
through  the  aid  of  reformers. 

Eighteenth  century  in  England  is  characterized  by  the  number 
of  men  who  thought  incisively  upon  the  conditions  in  govern- 
ment, labor  and  society.  They  understood,  as  the  mass  of  the 
people  did  not,  how  surely  the  latter  were  approaching  a  position 
of  governmental  power.  They  rightly  reasoned  that  reforms 
should  be  made  that  would  be  beneficial  to  all  England.  Fore- 
most among  these  men  was  Jeremy  Bentham.  Influenced  by  the 
philosophy  of  Locke  which  taught  the  employment  of  reason, 
freedom  of  thought,  and  the  abandonment  of  prejudice,  and  also 
by  the  teachings  of  Beccaria,  Helvetius,  Hume,  and  Priestley, 
Bentham  formulated  the  principle  which  became  his  test  for  all 
conditions  of  life.1  This  principle,  utility,  Bentham  defined 
thus :  "  It  is  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number  that 
is  the  measure  of  right  and  wrong."1  He  was  convinced  that 
utility  was  ' '  capable  of  guiding  him  through  the  whole  labyrinth 
of  political  and  legislative  speculation. '  '3 

When  Bentham  listened  to  the  lectures  upon  the   English 


1  Stephen,   The  English   Utilitarians,   I,  p.   177. 

2  Bowring  Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  I,  p.  227. 

3  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  178. 


(19) 


20        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

Constitution  given  by  Blackstone  he  was  impressed  by  two 
things,  their  polished  phrasing  and  their  fallacies.4  Although 
but  a  youth  at  the  time  he  comprehended  with  keen  penetration 
that  England's  constitution  did  not  merit  the  perfection  accord- 
ed to  it  by  the  great  jurist.  In  his  essay  The  Fragment  on  Gov- 
ernment he  minutely  analyzed  statements  made  by  Blackstone 
and  pointed  out  errors  no  one  had  ever  dared  to  mention.  In 
successive  chapters  under  the  titles,  "Formation  of  the  Govern- 
ment," "Forms  of  Government,"  "British  Constitution." 
"Right  of  the  Supreme  Power  to  Make  Laws,"  and  "Duty  of 
the  Supreme  Power  to  Make  Laws."5  He  tore  Blackstone 's 
"whole  flimsy  fabric  to  rags  and  tatters."6  "He  broadly  avows 
his  universal  test — his  fundamental  principle  of  utility.  He 
shows  no  mercy  to  the  well-rounded  periods  of  Blackstone,  ex- 
posing with  the  most  ruthless  logic  their  ostentatious  wrapping 
up  of  no  meaning  in  sounding  language.  The  first  object  of  the 
treatise  is  to  show  that  analogous  to  discovery  and  improvement 
in  the  natural  world  is  reformation  in  the  moral  world.  With  an 
energy  unsurpassed  in  the  works  of  his  maturest  genius,  he 
vindicates  adherence  to  stern  simple  truth  on  all  occasions,  laying 
down  the  principle,  as  applicable  to  the  defender  of  abuses,  that 
'every  false  and  sophistical  reason  that  he  contributes  to  circu- 
late, he  is  himself  chargeable  with.'  He  makes  wild  work  with 
the  figures  of  speech  employed  to  plaster  up  the  chinks  and 
crannies  of  'Matchless  Constitution.'  He  tosses  about  and  dis- 
perses 'checks  and  balances,'  'blending  of  aristocracy,  demo- 
cracy, and  monarchy,  into  a  whole,  combining  all  their  advant- 
ages, and  free  from  their  defects,'  and  the  like.  He  paints  the 
social  structure  of  Britain  as  it  existed,  and  in  a  measure  still 
exists,  not  in  the  dainty  phrases  of  legal  fiction.  The  work  is 
critical:  it  shows  the  hollowness  of  what  had  hitherto  been 
taught."7 

Having  made  a  careful  study  of  the  English  constitution 
Bentham  pointed  out  the  lack  of  agreement  between  the  theory 
and  the  functioning  of  the  constitution.  Then  he  quoted  para- 
graphs from  Blackstone  and  discussed  them  in  order  to  expose 

4  Bowring.  op.   cit.,   X,  p.  45,   141,   I,  p.  286. 

6  Montague,  The  Fragment  on  Government,  p.  180. 
e  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I  p.  182. 

7  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  IX. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    21 

discrepancies.  Illustrative  of  this  is  the  passage :  ' '  For  as  with 
us  the  executive  power  of  the  laws  is  lodged  in  a  single  person, 
they  have  all  the  advantages  of  strength  and  dispatch  that  are 
to  be  found  in  the  most  absolute  monarchy;  and  as  the  legisla- 
ture of  the  kingdom  is  entrusted  to  three  distinct  powers  entirely 
independent  of  each  other;  first,  the  king;  secondly,  the  Lords 
Spiritual  and  Temporal,  which  is  an  aristocratical  assembly  of 
persons  selected  for  their  piety,  their  birth,  their  wisdom,  or  their 
valour,  or  their  property;  and  thirdly,  the  House  of  Commons, 
freely  chosen  by  the  people  from  among  themselves,  which 
makes  it  a  kind  of  democracy. '  '8  That  government  in  which  the 
people  freely  choose  members  of  its  legislative  body  from  among 
themselves  is  representative.  England's  government  was  com- 
monly called  representative;9  it  was  considered  such  by  other 
nations.10  But  Bentham  insisted  that  it  was  not  representative 
because  of  the  agencies  of  government, — King,  Ministry,  and 
Parliament, — only  a  small  portion  was  elected  directly  by  a 
restricted  electorate.  The  corruption  which  enabled  members  of 
the  House  of  Lords  to  purchase  the  election  of  many  members  of 
the  House  of  Commons,  and  the  control  exercised  by  the  ministry 
over  the  king,  placed  the  actual  governing  power  in  the  hands 
of  so  limited  a  number  of  persons  that  it  made  England's  gov- 
ernment really  an  oligarchy.  Bentham  showed  that  the  ideals 
advanced  by  Blackstone  and  the  actual  conditions  of  the  times 
were  strikingly  different;  therefore,  he  emphasized  the  need  of 
constitutional  reform  as  the  basis  of  legislative  and  administra- 
tive reform. 

The  Fragment  was  "a  serious  attempt  to  apply  scientific 
methods  to  problems  of  legislation,"11  but  the  English  nation 
had  not  yet  reached  the  stage  for  employing  these  methods. 
Bentham 's  attitude  toward  the  English  constitution  was  further 
defined  by  him  forty  years  after  he  published  the  essay:  "I 
prefer  the  English  Constitution,  such  as  it  is,  to  non-government, 
and  to  every  other  but  the  United  States  government.  But  I  do 
not  prefer  it,  such  as  it  is,  teeming  with  abuses  and  other  imper- 

6  Montague,  op.  cit.,  pp.  182ff. 

9  Hazen,  Europe  Since  1815,  p.  409. 

10  Ibid.,  p.  409. 

H  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I.  p.  182. 


22        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

factions  to  what  it  would  be  if  cleared  in  the  whole,  or  part,  of 
all  or  any  of  these  same  imperfections."12 

Believing  that  sovereign  power  belonged  to  the  people,  1 
Bentham  maintained  that  the  people  of  England  should  have  the 
privilege  of  exercising  this  power  through  a  representative  gov- 
ernment.14 Bentham  emphasized  the  idea  that  all  the  people  of 
the  nation  should  participate  in  governmental  matters.  England 's 
master  stroke  of  1295  had  consisted  in  the  fact  that  that  event 
definitely  made  the  nation's  legislative  body  representative.  The 
passing  of  the  next  five  centuries  had  been  marked  by  an  in- 
crease of  corruption  on  the  part  of  officials  as  they  gained  in 
governing  power  and  by  the  passage  of  restrictive  acts;  and 
thus  the  legislative  body  had  ceased  to  be  representative.  During 
these  same  centuries  the  people  had  grown  gradually  into  a 
larger  measure  of  the  instincts  and  interests  which  should  ultim- 
ately determine  their  place  in  the  governing  class.  However, 
when  the  philosopher,  Bentham,  presented  his  scheme  in  their 
behalf,  they  were  not  quite  prepared  for  it,  and  those  in  author- 
ity were  opposed  to  it. 

England  of  eighteen  hundred,  so  different  socially  and 
economically  from  England  of  thirteen  hundred,  had  need  of  re- 
form in  its  constitutional  administration,  particularly  in  its 
Parliament.  The  Parliament  at  Westminster  "was  in  no  con- 
ceivable sense  representative  of  the  English  people.  It  represent- 
ed the  territorial  aristocracy,  and,  to  a  certain  extent,  but  only 
a  very  limited  extent,  the  wealthiest  of  the  trading  and  manufac- 
turing classes.  No  Roman  Catholic,  Dissenter,  or  Jew  could  be 
a  member  of  Parliament;  when  all  other  disqualifications  were 
absent  there  was  a  property  qualification  which  prevented  any 
poor  man  from  obtaining  a  seat  in  the  House  of  Commons."15 
"Furthermore,  a  systematic  view  of  a  modern  State  in  all  its 
complexity  with  scientific  laws  and  regulations  was  utterly 
strange  to  English  thought."16  It  was  Bentham 's  mission  to 
teach  ' '  the  nation  that  scientific  investigations  are  indispensable 

Bentham   greatly   admired   the   Constitution   of   the   Anglo- 

12  Bowring.  op.  cit.,  XI.  p.  62. 

13/buL,  IX,  pp.  96ff. 

1*  Ibid.,  IX.  pp.  28.  87.  88.  75.  108,  104. 

15  McCarthy,  England  in  the  XlXth  Century,  p.  14. 

16  Redlich  and  Hint,  Local  Government  in  England,  I  p.  91. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    23 

American  United  States.  In  its  national  plan  of  executive,  leg- 
islative, and  judicial  departments  and  its  similar  individual  state 
if  laws  are  to  be  made  adequate  to  the  needs  of  a  modern  indus- 
trial state."17 

organizations  he  saw  a  democratic  representative  plan  with 
national  and  local  coordination.  The  people  of  the  United 
States  through  well-ordered  electoral  methods  participated  in 
the  making  of  their  laws  and  in  the  administration  of  them. 
Clearly  the  English  nation  could,  through  proper  adjustments  in 
electoral  arrangements  and  the  extension  of  franchise  rights,  be 
just  as  democratic  as  the  United  States.  He  elaborated  his  ideas 
in  the  Constitutional  Code,  in  which  may  be  found  the  germs  of 
many  reforms  enacted  into  English  legislation  during  the  past 
eighty  years.18  Bentham  was  confident  that  the  work  he  was 
trying  to  accomplish  would  in  time  be  brought  about,  notwith- 
standing the  repeated  disappointments  with  which  he  met.  "He 
is  said  to  have  expressed  the  wish  that  he  could  awake  once  in  a 
century  to  contemplate  the  prospect  of  a  world  gradually  adopt- 
ing his  principles  and  so  making  steady  progress  in  happiness 
and  wisdom."19 

Among  other  things  Bentham  presented  four  proposals  whose 
adoption  he  deemed  essential  to  constitutional  betterment:  (1) 
the  coordination  of  central  and  local  government;20  (2)  the 
reorganization  of  Parliament  as  a  representative  democratic  body 
and  the  organization  of  local  governing  bodies  on  the  same 
principle;21  (3)  the  political  sub-divisions  of  a  territory  should 
be  planned  in  harmony  with  the  principle  of  utility,  in  order  to 
satisfy  actual  needs,  and  not  planned  according  to  accident  or 
tradition;22  (4)  economy  and  efficiency  should  enter  into  the 
the  nation's  civil  service,  and  ability  and  knowledge  in  the 
respective  fields  should  be  the  test  for  obtaining  position.23 
Constitutional  Code,  arranged  a  central  and  a  local  plan  of  gov- 

England   had,    long   before   Bentham 's    day,   putgrown   the 
chaotic  system  of  government  under  which  it  was  living.    Wish- 


17  Ibid.,  I,  p.  91. 

18  Maine,  History  of  Early  Institutions,  p.  397. 

19  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  230. 

20  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  IX,  p.   640. 

21  Ibid.,  Ill,   p.   663 

22  Ibid.,  Ill,  pp.  579ff. 

23  Ibid.,  IX,  pp.  266ff. 


24        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

ing  to  remedy  the  inefficient  administration,  Bentham,  in  his 
ernment  that  paralleled  each  other  in  administrative  and  legisla- 
tive functions.  He  presented  a  graduated  scheme  of  division  of 
territory  into  districts,  subdistricts,  and  bis-subdistricts  for  the 
election  of  legislative  officials.24  However,  his  contemporaries 
were  so  accustomed  to  the  traditional  hundred,  wapentake  liberty, 
manorial  court,  parish,  township,  union,  county  and  municipality 
with  all  the  peculiarities  attendant  upon  them,  that  they  were 
not  disposed  to  adopt  his  modified  form  so  marked  by  simplicity. 
The  organization  of  Parliament,  or  the  central  government,  and 
of  local  government  upon  the  same  principles,  although  plainly 
a  method  that  would  facilitate  and  improve  administration  and 
legislation,  was  a  suggestion  too  far  in  advance  of  the  times  to 
meet  with  support.  The  time  was  ripe  through  growth  in  indus- 
trial lines  for  fixing  upon  a  plan  of  districting  that  would 
eliminate  the  cumbrous  method  in  use,  but  the  progress  of  the 
day  was  not  yet  to  be  recognized  in  governmental  administra- 
tion. To  require  ability  and  knowledge  as  qualifications  of 
officials  would  be  at  such  variance  with  what  was  customary  in 
the  way  of  office  filling  that  it  could  not  be  accepted. 

Bentham  consistently  promulgated  the  idea  that  detailed  and 
complete  administration  in  both  central  and  local  government 
was  absolutely  essential  to  the  greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest 
number.  He  outlined  a  careful,  practical  scheme  for  the  distri- 
bution and  the  classification  of  duties  and  officials.  He  strongly 
denounced  anything  in  governmental  work  that  evidenced  wrong 
and  injustice. 

Although  he  met  with  discouragements  and  rebuffs,  the  efforts 
put  forth  by  him  and  by  his  friends  in  Parliament  finally  result- 
ed in  legislation  that  secured  constitutional  reform  based  upon 
the  ideas  he  had  advocated.  The  governing  and  the  governed, 
unequal  in  eighteen  hundred,  were  elements  that  became  poised 
long  before  the  year  nineteen  hundred  in  a  democratic  balance. 
The  electorate  of  England  increased  so  as  to  be  made  up  of  prac- 
tically all  male  citizens.  The  redistricting  of  territory  upon 
Benthamic  plans,  the  removal  of  restrictions,  the  responsibility 
of  the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  to  the  people,  the 
responsibility  of  the  ministry  to  the  House  of  Commons,  are 

*i  Ibid.,  IX.  p.  147. 


several  conditions  which  evidence  that  sovereignty  in  England 
today  rests  with  the  supreme  constitutive.  The  interest  of  the 
people  in  governmental  activities  is  co-equal  with  their  interest 
in  industrial,  social  and  economic  lines;  and  the  efforts  of  the 
legislative  department  are  directed  towards  democratic  ideals. 
Bentham's  writings  and  teachings  aided  in  making  Blackstone's 
statement,  "freely  chosen  by  the  people  from  among  themselves," 
become  a  reality.  The  aristocratic  tendency  and  the  oligarchic 
power  of  the  government  have  lessened  and  waned  as  England's 
people  have  progressed  into  a  democracy. 


CHAPTER  III 

BENTHAM'S  FIGHT  FOR  POLITICAL  DEMOCRACY 
(Concluded) 

The  progress  of  England  in  democratic  ideas  and  democratic 
legislation  since  the  dawning  of  the  nineteenth  century  is  a 
development  of  prime  historical  significance.    Prior  to  eighteen 
hundred  England  was  a  country  closely  held  in  the  thraldom  of 
tradition.     Her  people  were  supporters  of  existing  conditions 
because  of  the  reverence  and  the  respect  accorded  to  those  hold- 
ing the  reins  of  government,  and  because  the  interests  and  the 
instincts  of  the  uninstructed  had  not  yet  attained  maturity.  The 
leaven  of  enlightenment,  due  to  the  writings  of  eighteenth  cen- 
tury philosophers,  began  to  have  an  influence,  but  this  influence 
could  not  be  very  great  until  someone  daring  enough  to  break 
away  from  established  custom  should  come  forward,  expose  the 
wrongs  of  the  past  centuries,  and  present  constructive  proposals 
for  betterment.    At  a  time  when  freedom  of  thought  had  led  to 
much  suffering  in  France,  and  had  resulted  in  setting  up  an  in- 
dependent government  in  America,  England's  government  with- 
stood  progressive   change.      Her   ruling   authorities   could   not 
graciously  accept  modifications  in  the  administration  of  their 
duties  that  would  take  from  them  traditional  and  coveted  power. 
For  the  landed  gentry,  the  heritage  from  the  past  was  parlia- 
mentary position;  for  the  legally  learned  the  accorded  right 
was  machination  in  their  own  behalf;  for  the  great  majority  of 
the  population,  it  was  obedience  to  what  existed.    Jeremy  Bent- 
ham  resolutely  assumed  the  task  of  changing  the  gentry's  heri- 
tage, correcting  the  legal  wrongs,  and  securing  larger  political 
rights  for  the  great  majority.    As  the  result  of  his  labors  it  is 
now  claimed  that  today  "his  doctrines  have  become  so  far  part 
of  the  common  thought  of  the  time  that  there  is  hardly  an  edu- 
cated man  who  does  not  accept  as  too  clear  for  argument  truths 
which  were  invisible  till  Bentham  pointed  them  out. ' n 

Unquestionably  it  may  be  said  that  Bentham  was  the  great 

1  Encyclopedia  Brittanica,  III,  p.  748. 

(26) 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    27 

critical  thinker  of  his  age  and  country.2  He  possessed  a  mind 
which  enabled  him  to  build,  from  minutest  detail  to  finished 
scheme,  plans  conducive  to  improvement  in  government  and 
legal  administration.  Being  one  of  the  first  to  introduce  pre- 
cision of  thought  into  moral  and  political  philosophy,  Bentham 
had  of  necessity  to  meet  the  attacks  of  those  who  were  biased  by 
tradition,  but  his  optimistic  nature  aided  him  in  warding  off 
objections  and  encouraged  him  to  continue  along  a  line  of  great 
resistance.  Because  of  unswerving  application  to  the  promulga- 
tion of  his  carefully  analyzed  schemes  he  is  today  classed  with 
Adam  Smith  as  having  brought  about  happiness  and  prosperity 
for  mankind  during  the  past  century  and  a  quarter.3  Chatterton 
says  that  it  is  to  England's  lasting  credit  that  she  produced  in 
Jeremy  Bentham  the  greatest  practical  law  reformer  of  any 
age  or  country.4  Unhesitatingly  he  disclosed  ''the  fanatic  and 
illogical  maxims  on  which  technical  systems  were  founded,  he 
derided  their  absurdities  and  exposed  the  flagrant  evils  which 
in  practice  they  produced. '  '5 

Bentham  reasoned  that  the  problem  of  the  legislator  as  a  law- 
maker was  to  further  the  enactment  of  laws  which  would  secure 
for  everyone  in  the  nation  the  greatest  happiness.  Those  in 
legislative  position  should,  in  considering  a  measure,  weigh  it 
both  with  reference  to  present  and  future  results.  England's 
fault  had  been  to  enact  laws  for  immediate  use  as  occasion  de- 
manded without  considering  their  continued  usefulness  or 
worth.  Hence  arose  the  growing  inadequacy  of  accumulating 
laws.  Bentham  presented  a  new  principle  for  law-makers  in  urg- 
ing that  they  formulate  laws  after  having  thoroughly  reasoned 
out  the  intention  and  the  motive  governing  them.  In  the  words 
of  Bentham  a  good  motive  gives  birth  to  a  good  intention,  a  bad 
motive  to  a  bad  intention,  and  "an  invention  is  good  or  bad  ac- 
cording to  the  material  consequences"  resulting.6 

It  was  also  his  claim  that  the  legislators  should  put  aside  their 
personal,  selfish  interests  and  work  for  the  genuine  positive 
good  of  the  many.  This  claim  was  in  direct  contrast  to  the 

2  Mill,  Dissertations  and  Discussions,  I,  pp.  355ff. 

3  Chatterton,  Britain's  Record,  pp.  232ft. 

4  Ibid.,  p.  260. 

5  Atkinson,  Jeremy  Bentham,  p.  138. 

6  Davidson,  Political  Thought  in  England,  pp.  57ff. 


28        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

statement  made  by  the  Bishop  of  Rochester  in  1795,  the  sub- 
stance of  which  was  that  ' '  he  did  not  know  what  the  great  mass 
of  the  people  had  to  do  with  the  laws  except  to  obey  them. '  '7  On 
the  legislators  of  a  country  rests  a  great  responsibility  which 
has  frequently  been  lightly  assumed.  The  statement  of  Hel- 
vetius,  "The  hidden  source  of  a  people's  vices  is  always  in  its 
legislation ;  it  is  there  that  we  must  search  if  we  would  discover 
and  extirpate  their  roots"8  is  very  bold;  yet  its  truth  cannot  be 
denied. 

Bentham's  training  and  experience  caused  him  to  see  serious 
defects  in  the  laws  of  England  and  their  administration.  Hop- 
ing to  bring  about  improvement  by  striking  at  the  roots  of  exist- 
ing evils  he  labored  earnestly  to  influence  legislators  to  exert 
their  power  in  Parliament  to  that  end.  Lansdowne,  Pitt,  Rom- 
illy,  Mill,  Brougham,  Burdett,  Wilberforce,  and  other  leading 
members  of  Parliament  were  among  the  friends  and  associates 
of  Bentham  who  were  well  aware  of  the  need  of  reform  in  legis- 
lation and  in  the  administration  of  justice.  Their  discussions 
upon  public  topics  led  to  the  introduction  of  bills  in  Parliament 
that  were  rejected.  The  reason  for  their  rejection  is  found  in 
Bentham's  own  words:  "Though  Lord  Lansdowne  has  neither 
the  wish  nor  the  power  to  do  much  good,  yet  the  other  lords  are 
as  much  below  him  as  he  is  below  what  he  ought  to  be.  He 
said  to  me,  the  lords  were  a  wall  against  improvement."9  How- 
ever, each  bill  brought  forth  was  effective  in  setting  more  and 
more  men  to  thinking  and  in  time  the  thinking  yielded  a  large 
and  goodly  fruitage.  Since  1832  England  has  legislated  into  ex- 
istence many  reforms  and  Sir  Henry  Maine  said  every  one  of 
them  could  be  traced  to  the  teachings  of  Jeremy  Bentham.10 

Bentham  treated  administration  and  legislation  as  sciences 
demanding  a  foundation  as  technical  and  complete  as  mathe- 
matics or  natural  philosophy,  and  a  superstructure  so  wholly  in 
accord  with  the  foundation  that  uniting  the  two,  foundation  and 
superstructure,  would  yield  an  harmonious  system  that  could 
be  subjected  to  rigid  analysis  yet  stand.11  His  Constitutional 


7  Rose,  J.  Holland,  William  Pitt  and  the  Great  War,  p.  286. 

8  Sidgwick,  Miscellaneous  Essays,  p.  152. 

9  Bowring,   The   Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,   X,   p.    122. 

10  Maine,  History  of  Early  Institutions,  p.  397. 

11  Burton,    John    Hill,    Introduction    to    the    Study    of   the    Works    of   Jeremy    Ben- 
tham, p.  5. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    29 

Code,  which  is  the  crowning  work  of  his  writings,  was  written 
after  he  had  lived  a  full,  rich  lifetime  devoted  to  a  single  in- 
terest, viz.,  the  betterment  of  humanity.  The  Constitutional  Code 
is  characterized  by  completeness  of  fabric  and  accuracy  of  pro- 
portion and  forms  a  homogeneous  whole  which  reveals  the  au- 
thor's grasp  of  his  subject.  The  structure  and  interrelated  har- 
mony of  the  Constitutional  Code  are  such  that  one  who  was  per- 
sonally associated  with  its  author  said:  "In  no  language  does 
any  other  such  monument  of  the  legislatorial  labor  of  one  mind 
exist."12 

Many  opinions  advanced  by  Bentham  were  so  at  variance  with 
the  accepted  regulations  of  his  day  that  they  were  naturally 
set  aside  or  coldly  received.13  But  he  did  not  lose  faith  in  what 
he  had  determined  upon  for  he  well  knew  that  men  cannot 
change  quickly  institutions  that  had  centuries  of  time  for  sup- 
port. America 's  Aaron  Burr,  friend  and  correspondent  of  Bent- 
ham,  said  that  a  century  of  time  would  have  to  pass  before  the 
philosopher  would  be  understood,  but  that  then  he  would  be 
adored.14  As  the  result  of  persistent  efforts,  the  opinions  Bentham 
presented  gradually  gained  ground,  and  they  have  become  so 
welded  into  the  nation's  constitutional  law  that  men  do  not  now 
stop  to  consider  that  the  ideas  were  ever  other  than  their  own. 

As  Bentham  worked  he  kept  always  in  mind  his  principle  of 
utility  and  every  item  of  his  Constitutional  Code  will  bear  test- 
ing by  it.  ' '  He  did  not  say  that  the  world  had  hitherto  been  ig- 
norant of  usch  a  principle ;  *  *  *  He  found  indeed  that  it  was 
at  the  root  of  all  systems  of  religion  and  morality ;  that  all  codes 
of  law  were  more  or  less  founded  upon  it;  and  that  it  was,  in 
all  places  and  at  ail  times,  an  unseen  and  unacknowledged  guide 
to  human  action.  But  he  was  the  first  to  bring  forth  this  guide, 
to  prove  to  the  world  that  it  should  be  followed  implicitly,  and 
to  show  hitherto,  from  not  keeping  their  guide  in  view,  men  had 
often  wandered  from  the  right  path.  '  The  good  of  the  commun- 
ity,' 'the  interests  of  the  public,'  'the  welfare  of  mankind,'  all 
expressions  to  be  found  in  the  mouths  of  those  who  talk  of  the 
proper  ends  of  action,  were  so  many  acknowledgments  of  the 
Greatest  happiness  Principle,  and  vague  attempts  to  embody 


12  Ibid.,   p.    12. 

13  Ibid.,  p.  8. 

14  Parton,  Life  of  Aaron  Burr,  II,  p.  171. 


30        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

it."18  Details  from  start  to  finish  are  fully  worked  out  in  the 
Constitutional  Code  and  it  is  because  Bentham  gave  the  details 
of  the  operation  of  his  principle  that  the  principle  itself  has 
been  accepted.16 

Declaring  that  all  departments  of  England's  government  were 
so  administered  as  to  enhance  the  power  of  the  official  incum- 
bents and  that  they  had  "at  all  times  had  an  interest  and  a  de- 
sire operating  in  direct  opposition  to  those  of  their  subjects,"17 
Bentham  claimed  first  importance  for  a  constitutional  code  be- 
cause all  other  codes  would  depend  upon  it.18  Among  the  first 
principles  introductory  to  his  code  was:  "The  actual  end  of 
government  is,  in  every  political  community,  the  greatest  hap- 
piness of  those,  whether  one  or  many,  by  whom  the  powers  of 
government  are  exercised."19  This  principle  was  said  to  be  ex- 
emplified in  the  Anglo-American  United  States  because  it  has  a 
constitution  based  upon  the  principle  of  utility.20  Contrasted 
with  this  was  the  fact  that  "The  English  monarchy  has  no  con- 
stitution for  it  has  no  all-comprehensive  constitutional  code.'21 
Because  fortune  or  providence  is  the  element  that  determines 
who  shall  be  the  ruler  in  a  monarchy  and  human  judgment  is 
the  element  that  determines  the  ruler  of  a  representative  democ- 
racy Bentham  claimed  superiority  of  the  latter  over  the  form- 
er.22 The  constitutional  branch  of  the  law  in  an  absolute  mon- 
archy aims  at  the  greatest  happiness  of  one  individual  and  the 
constitutional  branch  of  the  representative  democracy  aims  at 
the  happiness  of  the  greatest  number.23 

By  his  presentation  and  analysis  of  the  various  departments 
in  representative  government,  Bentham  developed  a  complete 
and  comprehensive  administrative  scheme.  The  relation  of  civil, 
penal,  and  military  law,  the  law  of  procedure,  and  financial  af- 
fairs to  the  constitutional  law  of  a  representative  democracy  was 
pointed  out  in  such  a  way  as  to  show  that  all  are  linked  together, 
and  their  harmonious  cooperation  results  in  the  well-being 


15  Burton,  John  Hill,  op.  cit.,  pp.  19ff. 

16  Ibid.,  p.  20. 

17  Bowring,  op.  cit.,   IX,   p.   2. 

18  Ibid.,  IX.  p.  3. 

19  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  6. 

20  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  9. 

21  Ibid.,  IX,  p  .9. 
2'.'  Ibid.,  IX.,  p.  10. 
23  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  10. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    31 

of  the  nation  at  large.  Bentham  set  forth  the  evils  in  the  sys- 
tems of  absolute  and  limited  monarchies  and  then  presented  the 
corresponding  advantages  of  a  democracy.  By  means  of  this 
analysis  he  developed  the  superiority  of  a  representative  democ- 
racy over  a  monarchy,  justly  claiming  that  where  many  bear 
responsibility,  many  have  direct  interest,  and  the  maximum  of 
happiness  results. 

He  explained  the  many  conditions  in  England  conducive  to 
corruption,  and  attributed  the  extensive  yielding  to  corruption  on 
the  part  of  governmental  officials  to  the  fact  that  the  ones  in 
hereditary  positions  had  power  to  offer  tempting  opportunities 
to  sub-officials.    ' '  The  members  of  the  official  establishment  have, 
in  their  quality  of  corruptors,  or  would-be  corruptors,  their  ac- 
complices, and  in  the  natural  course  of  things,  their  confeder- 
ates."-4   Again  he  wrote:    "In  England,  in  virtue  of  the  pre- 
established  harmony,  so  long  as  the  Constitution  stands,  cor- 
ruption with  its  etceteras  is  predestined  to  go  on  in  a  state  of 
perpetual  advance:   never  to  be   stationary,   much  less  retro- 
grade."25   In  contradistinction  to  this  he  said:    "Although  the 
complete  exclusion  of  corruption  is  too  much  to  hope  for,  what 
is  not  too  much  to  hope  for  is  the  bringing  it  about  to  a  degree 
less  than  it  exists  at  present  even  in  the  United  States."28    He 
held  that  the  administration  of  government  by  elective  officials 
dependent  upon  the  supreme  constitutive  secures  the  desired 
ends  of  government.     The  officials  in  the  scheme  developed  in 
Bentham 's  Constitutional  Code  were  the  legislature,  the  prime 
minister,  the  ministers,  the  judiciary,  the  sublegislatures,  and 
local  officials.    The  Code  analyzed  and  explained  the  duties  and 
the  compensation  for  each  official  and  showed  that,  through  co- 
operation with  the  supreme  constitutive,  the  best  in  government 
for  the  nation  could  be  secured. 

Comparing  the  two  forms  of  government  the  author  of  the 
Constitutional  Code  said:  "  Pure  monarchy  is  the  rock  which, 
having  been  placed  and  poised  by  accident  the  push  of  a  finger 
has  sufficed  to  move:  broad  at  bottom,  pointed  at  top,  a  repre- 
sentative democracy  is  a  pyramid."27  His  attitude  toward  the 


24  Ibid.,  IX,  p.   67. 

25  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  73. 

26  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  76. 

27  Ibid.,  IX,  p.   133. 


32        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

hereditary  monarch  was  definitely  one  of  opposition  for  he 
could  not  bring  himself  to  believe  that  such  a  ruler  had  the  in- 
terests of  the  people  at  heart.  This  is  evidenced,  for  example, 
in  his  statement :  "  In  a  monarchy,  be  the  conduct  of  the  ruler 
ever  so  mischievous,  the  difficulty  of  dislocating  him  is  pro- 
digious, and  scarcely  ever  can  any  change  be  effected  without 
either  a  homicide,  or  a  war — which  is  an  aggregate  of  homicides 
by  hundreds  and  thousands ;  whereas  in  a  representative  democ- 
racy, the  rulers  may  be,  and  continually  are,  all  of  them  to- 
gether, though  it  be  merely  in  the  way  of  precaution,  and  with- 
out evil  actually  experienced  at  their  hands,  dislocated  with  as 
much  facility  as  a  servant  is  by  his  master,  in  domestic  life.28 
Bentham  being  contemporaneous  with  George  III  saw  in  him 
living  evidence  of  what  he  considered  gross  abuse  of  the  people 's 
rights  in  the  daring  assumption  of  power  on  the  part  of  that 
ruler.  Undoubtedly  the  conduct  of  George  III  and  the  progress 
of  the  democratic  United  States  of  America  were  the  two  ex- 
tremes that  caused  Bentham  to  say  that  the  republican  form  of 
government  was  the  only  form  that  would  work  out  successfully 
upon  his  principle  of  utility  as  a  foundation.  With  the  passing 
of  the  years  the  powers  of  England's  monarch  have  been  less- 
ened to  such  an  extent  and  so  much  is  he  controlled  by  ' '  the  will 
of  the  governed"  that  practically  the  only  respect  in  which 
Bentham 's  view  has  fallen  short  of  realization  is  that  the  king- 
ship is  still  hereditary. 

England's  approach  to  democracy  has  rested  also  upon  the 
make-up  of  Parliament.  Bentham  desired  to  have  its  member- 
ship composed  of  elective  officials,  placed  in  their  positions  by  the 
universal  manhood  suffrage  exercised  in  an  unrestricted  intelli- 
gent manner.  Hence,  he  advocated  manhood  suffrage  and  the 
enployment  of  the  secret  ballot.  He  emphasized  the  unfairness 
that  marked  the  returns  of  members  to  Parliament  and  the  utter 
lack  of  a  voice  in  government  matters  on  the  part  of  the  millions 
most  vitally  affected  by  legislation.  Little  by  little  his  scheme 
for  wider  franchise  gained  supporters  among  leading  statesmen 
and  publicists  such  as  Brougham,  Dunham,  Peel,  Romilly,  Hunt, 
Hobhouse,  O'Connell,  Place,  Cobbett  and  Burdett.  Practically 
forty  years  of  discussion  and  the  defeat  of  several  bills  resulted 

.  IX.  p.   103. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    33 

in  the  Reform  Bill  of  1832.  This  bill  by  the  disfranchisement 
of  "rotten  boroughs,"  the  increased  representation  of  the  large 
manufacturing  centres,  and  the  modification  of  the  franchise  so 
that  more  householders  became  voters,  shows  marked  results  of 
Bentham's  influence. 

Through  the  last  thirty  years  of  his  life  Bentham  knew  that 
his  doctrines  were  spreading,  that  men 's  minds  were  broadening, 
that  the  masses  were  awakening  to  a  true  sense  of  their  rights  as 
voters  and  to  an  understanding  of  England's  need  of  a  fairly- 
elected,  representative  legislature.  The  Reform  Bill  of  1832 
acted  as  an  opening  wedge  to  further  parliamentary  reform 
which  may  be  attributed  to  Bentham  because  the  ideas  promul- 
gated by  him  were  developed  through  the  efforts  of  his  disciples. 
His  personal  friends,  Romilly,  Brougham  and  James  Mill,  were 
among  the  members  of  Parliament  who  were  very  influential  in 
bringing  about  these  measures  for  improvement.  In  1835  the 
Municipal  Corporations  Act  dealing  with  the  municipal  govern- 
ment of  the  boroughs,  built  wholly  upon  Bentham's  principles, 
was  passed  and  thus  the  boroughs  obtained  a  democratic  basis 
which  was  not  formerly  theirs. 

The  rights  of  the  people  were  continually  and  consistently 
fostered  by  able  leaders  in  the  decade  immediately  following 
Bentham's  death.  Foremost  among  these  leaders  were  Richard 
Cobden  and  John  Bright  through  whose  zealous  efforts  the  people 
were  educated  in  political  matters  at  great  mass  meetings,  while 
the  members  of  the  House  of  Commons  listened  spellbound  to 
orations  of  Bright  which  sounded  throughout  the  doctrines  of 
Bentham.  The  spirit  of  democracy,  aroused  by  the  writings  of 
the  philosopher  of  Queen's  Square  Place,  yielded  results  from 
time  to  time  that  aided  greatly  in  bringing  into  actual  use  the 
scientific  legislation  upon  a  democratic  basis  which  is  today 
England's  proud  possession. 

The  additional  gains  of  the  people  with  reference  to  the  fran- 
chise are  seen  in  the  passage  of  bills  which  marked  important 
advances  in  democracy.  The  Act  of  1867  outstepped  the  Bill  of 
1832  in  a  most  natural  manner.  More  householders,  more  rent- 
ers, more  workingmen  were  given  the  right  to  vote,  and  thus 
more  of  the  humble  individuals  were  given  opportunity  to  stand 
by  the  side  of  aristocratic  individuals  and  "count  for  one." 
The  Act  of  1884,  since  it  excluded  from  the  franchise  only  three 


34        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

classes  of  people — domestic  servants,  those  who  had  no  fixed 
abode,  and  bachelors  living  with  their  parents — moved  forward 
practically  to  manhood  suffrage.  It  was  very  close  to  a  verifica- 
tion of  Bentham  's  statement :  ' '  The  governed  cannot  all  of  them 
be  exercising  the  immediate  powers  of  government,  but  at  stated 
times  they  may  all  of  them  exercise  the  function  of  declaring 
who  the  individuals  shall  be  by  whom  those  same  immediate 
powers  shall  be  exercised. '  '29 

During  the  ministry  of  Lord  Salisbury  in  1888  an  act  was 
passed  by  Parliament  which  secured  for  London  and  the  rural 
counties  municipal  administration  such  as  Bentham  advocated. 
This  act  with  the  measure  of  1835,  makes  it  possible  to  say  that 
England  and  Wales  were  placed  distinctly  upon  a  democratic 
basis  for  the  election  of  municipal  officials.  The  substance  of 
the  foregoing  measure  is  purely  Benthamic  and  reveals  again 
the  influence  of  the  philosopher  of  Queen's  Square  Place. 

With  reference  to  woman's  suffrage  Bentham  took  a  decided 
stand.  In  harmony  with  his  principle,  he  claimed  that  there  was 
no  reason  why  a  person  of  one  sex  should  have  less  happiness 
than  a  person  of  the  other  sex  and  that  the  happiness  of  a  person 
of  the  female  sex  constituted  as  large  a  part  of  universal  happi- 
ness as  the  happiness  of  a  person  of  the  male  sex.30  He  emphat- 
ically stated  that  woman  was  as  capable  of  mastering  the  tech- 
nique of  the  franchise  as  man.  He  proved  that  woman  in  theory 
was  as  capable  of  holding  governmental  position  as  man,  clinch- 
ing his  argument  by  saying:  "In  no  two  male  reigns  was 
England  as  prosperous  as  in  the  two  female  reigns  of  Elizabeth 
and  Anne. '  '31  Because  the  thought  of  woman 's  voting  was  very 
radical  and  because  his  contemporaries  did  not  look  up  the  his- 
tory of  it,  derision  very  naturally  greeted  Bentham 's  advocacy 
of  woman's  suffrage.  When  John  Stuart  Mill  in  1867  moved 
an  amendment  to  Disraeli's  bill  in  which  he  suggested  that  the 
word  "persons"  be  substituted  for  "men,"  the  amendment  pro- 
voked great  amusement  and  was  defeated  by  a  vote  of  one  hun- 
dred and  ninety-six  to  seventy-three.  However,  the  year  1868 
was  marked  by  the  formation  of  a  "National  Society  for  Wo- 
men's Suffrage"  and  the  next  year  saw  the  first  franchise 

20  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  95. 
aoibid.,  IX,  p.  108. 
31  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  108. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    35 

privilege  granted  to  woman.  Since  1869  successive  acts  of  legis- 
lation have  very  materially  extended  the  citizenship  privileges 
and  political  rights  of  woman. 

In  the  exercise  of  the  limited  franchise  of  his  time,  Bentham 
saw  so  much  that  was  grossly  wrong  in  the  practice  of  bribery 
and  intimindation  that  he  wrote  freely  upon  these  evils  and 
pointed  out  the  injustice  of  a  system  that  permitted  them.  To 
obviate  these  wrongs  he  presented  the  plan  of  the  secret  ballot. 
Resolutions  presented  in  Parliament  June  2,  1818,  by  Sir  Fran- 
cis Burdett,  drafted  by  Bentham,  had  included  universal  man- 
hood suffrage  and  the  ballot.  Tories  and  Whigs  both  opposed 
the  resolutions  and  they  were  lost,  but  the  impetus  given  to  the 
matter  gradually  increased  until  1872  when  the  passage  of  the 
Ballot  Act  provided  for  the  ballot  and  the  voting  booth. 

The  English  Constitution  of  today,  contrasted  with  the  con- 
stitution of  Bentham 's  day,  reveals  a  significant  transformation. 
This  change  is  seen  and  not  seen,  for  as  Bagehot  says,  "the  an- 
cient and  ever  altering  constitution  is  like  an  old  man  who  still 
wears  with  attached  fondness  clothes  in  the  fashion  of  his  youth ; 
what  you  see  of  him  is  still  the  same;  what  you  do  not  see  is 
wholly  altered."32  As  early  as  1776  Bentham  had  determined 
that  Blackstone  's  phrase,  ' '  The  House  of  Commons  freely  chosen 
by  the  people  from  among  themselves,"33  should  become  true. 
The  House  of  Commons  today  elected  by  a  wide  electorate  is 
"a  corporate  entity  in  which  the  supreme  sovereignty  is  veste- 
ed. '  '3*  It  is  the  factor  which  determines  the  membership  of  the 
English  ministry,  a  department  invisible  in  Bentham 's  day  but 
today  "the  great  driving  wheel  that  moves  the  entire  constitu- 
tional machinery. '  '35  It  is  because  legislation,  effective  and  scien- 
tific, and  based  upon  utility,  has  become  a  reality  that  the 
English  people  are  now  exercising  political  rights  which  are  the 
fundamentals  of  a  genuine  democracy.  "The  mediaeval  mon- 
archy has  been  finally  transformed  into  the  hereditary  republic, 
in  which,  under  the  ancient  and  still  useful  forms  of  the  throne 
and  the  regalia  the  English  people  is  king. '  '3<J 

32  Taylor,  The  Origin  and  Grouth  of  the  English  Constitution,  III,  p.  592. 

33  Montague,  Bentham'a  A  Fragment  of  Government,  p.   183. 

34  Taylor,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  593. 

35  /oirf.,  I,  p.  593. 

36  Ibid.,  I,  p.  594. 


CHAPTER  IV 

LEGAL  AND  JUDICIAL  REFORM 

Jeremiah  Bentham  desired  above  all  things  that  his  son  Jer- 
emy should  become  a  renowned  lawyer,  win  honor  in  the  field 
of  jurisprudence,  and  eventually  attain  the  woolsack.  The  son 
mastered  the  lawyer's  profession,  but  as  has  already  been  point- 
ed out,  he  saw  in  it,  as  it  was  practised,  much  of  which  he  could 
not  approve.  At  a  time  when,  on  the  one  hand,  many  could  not 
think  and  do  for  themselves,  and  on  the  other  hand,  the  ones  in 
governmental  authority  were  thinking  and  doing  mainly  for 
their  own  interests,  Jeremy  Bentham  was  considering  the  prob- 
lems of  humanity  for  humanity's  sake.  Among  other  things  he 
wished  to  expose  the  wrongs  that  professional  men  kept  con- 
cealed in  the  winding  processes  of  the  law,  processes  that  were 
beyond  the  understanding  of  the  ignorant  masses.1  The  un- 
fairness of  long  trials  and  the  intricacy  of  legal  procedure, 
characteristic  of  court  action  in  England  for  many  years,  Ben- 
tham desired  to  see  removed.  This  caused  him  to  determine 
upon  a  very  different  career  from  the  one  planned  for  him  by 
his  father. 

For  the  nineteen-twentieths  of  England 's  people  who  were  un- 
tutored, uneducated,  held  down  by  the  tradition,  Bentham  be- 
came the  champion  who  unflinchingly  exposed  evils,  suggested 
remedies,  and  presented  plans  for  reform.  In  the  face  of  times 
and  conditions  that  for  years  were  at  variance  with  his  ideas, 
he  labored  untiringly  to  secure  the  removal  of  wrongs  that  had 
long  been  endured,  for  he  had  early  in  his  philosophical  think- 
ing reached  the  conclusion  that  there  should  be  more  justice 
for  the  masses  in  England.  According  to  Bentham 's  philosophy 
there  would  be  more  justice  if  the  institutions  of  men  were 
built  upon  the  principle  of  utility,  which  simply  means  that 
which  is  conducive  to  happiness,  or  "the  greatest  happiness  of 
the  greatest  number. '  '2 

England's   mass   of   laws   "reared   with    incredible   labour, 

1  Westminster  Review,   XIV    (1887),  pp.   362-354. 

2  Mere.  History  of  European  Thought  in  the  Nineteenth  Century,  IV,  pp.  142ff. 

(36) 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    37 

through  a  long  succession  of  ages"3  was  characterized  chiefly  by 
confusion  due  to  haphazard  construction  and  enactment.4  Having 
been  made  without  a  plan,  the  laws  utterly  lacked  system ;  having 
been  enacted  piece-meal,  frequently  to  fit  cases  for  immediate 
use,  statutes  became  incorporated  into  the  body  of  the  law  and 
remaind  there.  Knowledge  of  the  law  was  the  possession  of  the 
legally  learned,  so  the  people  did  not  know  the  law  nor  its  inter- 
pretation. Consequently  many  unwittingly  broke  the  law  and 
suffered  penalties  that  were  cruelly  unjust. 

From  his  own  analysis  of  the  law  Bentham  could  say:  "The 
substantive  part  of  it,  whether  as  written  in  books  or  expounded 
by  judges,  a  chaos,  fathomless  and  boundless;  the  huge  and 
monstrous  mass  being  made  up  of  fiction,  tautology,  technicality, 
circuity,  irregularity,  and  inconsistency :  the  administrative  part 
of  it,  a  system  of  exquisitely  contrived  chicanery ;  a  system  made 
up  of  abuses ;  a  system  which  constantly  places  the  interest  of  the 
judicial  minister  in  opposition  to  his  duty,  and  in  the  very  pro- 
portion in  which  it  serves  his  ends,  it  defeats  the  ends  of  justice ; 
a  system  of  self-authorized  and  unpunishable  depredation;  a 
system  which  encourages  mendacity,  both  by  reward  and  punish- 
ment; a  system  which  puts  fresh  arms  into  the  hands  of  the 
injurer,  to  annoy  and  distress  the  injured;  in  a  word,  a  system 
which  maximizes  delay,  sale,  and  denial  of  justice."5  Bentham 
attacked  the  ' '  fabric  reared  by  the  most  exalted  intellects, '  '6  and 
labored  to  direct  the  thoughts  and  the  efforts  of  influential  men 
to  the  accomplishment  of  legal  reform. 

The  history  of  English  legal  administration  contains  many 
cases  characterized  by  great  injustices  of  charge,  procedure,  and 
penalty.  As  an  illustration  may  be  cited  the  case  of  Mr.  Price, 
a  clergyman  for  many  years  in  a  parish  church.  In  behalf  of  the 
striking  weavers  of  Kidderminster  he  had  written  some  articles 
that  were  simply  explanatory  of  the  situation.  He  was  arrested 
for  libel  and  tried.  The  details  of  the  case  clearly  show  that  he 
was  not  guilty  of  the  charge  brought  against  him.  At  the  con- 
clusion of  the  trial,  however,  he  was  declared  guilty,  his  posses- 
sions were  sold,  his  family  scattered,  and  he  was  condemned  to  a 


3  Bowring,  The  Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  XI.  p.  84. 

4  Ibid.,  I,  p.  162. 

5  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  85. 

6  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  84. 


38        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

year's  term  of  imprisonment.  The  expense  to  the  prosecutors 
was  from  seventeen  hundred  to  two  thousand  pounds.7  Bentham 
felt  that  such  wrong  should  be  rendered  impossible,  that  the 
people  should  have  a  clear  understanding  of  the  law,  and  that 
legal  adepts  should  no  longer  have  opportunity  of  obtaining  un- 
fair fees.  He  exposed  the  many  devices  employed  by  the  courts, 
described  the  long  winding  processes  that  ensued  before  a  hear- 
ing was  granted,  showed  the  difficulty  litigants  experienced  in 
getting  to  distant  courts,  elaborated  the  method  of  bandying 
cases  from  court  to  court,  and  explained  the  injustice  of  using 
unintelligible  Latin  and  Law-French. 

Clearly  one  of  England's  great  needs  was  a  code  of  laws  that 
could  be  understood  and  known  in  minutest  detail.  Such  a  code, 
Bentham  claimed,  would  need  to  meet  four  conditions,  namely, 
completeness,  the  fewest  possible  number  of  rules  qualified  by 
generality,  the  expression  of  rules  in  logical  order,  and  the  em- 
ployment of  uniform  terminology.9  Confident  that  he  could 
draft  a  code  that  would  embody  the  comprehensiveness  mention- 
ed, Bentham  set  to  work.10  "With  powers  of  mind  fitted  for  an 
undertaking  thus  stupendous,  such  as  in  no  age  or  country  had 
ever  been  equalled,  or  even  so  much  as  approached;  with  an 
ardour  and  energy  such  as  in  no  cause,  bad  or  good,  had  ever 
been  surpassed,  he  betook  himself  to  the  accomplishment  of  this 
work."11  The  more  he  was  criticized  the  harder  he  worked. 
' '  Long  and  earnestly  did  he  labour  without  any  apparent  effect ; 
but  at  last  some  impression  was  made;  the  scales  fell  from  the 
eyes  of  men  of  powerful  intellects  in  commanding  stations. '  '12  It 
was  finally  admitted  that  the  law  of  England  needed  to  be  re- 
constructed. 

Bentham  divided  legislation  into  two  great  parts — internal 
law  which  concerned  the  ordinances  pertaining  to  the  individual 
community,  and  international  law  which  concerned  the  relations 
between  different  communities.  Being  chiefly  interested  in  in- 
ternal law  he  constructed  a  code  for  it  called  Pannomion.  He 
arranged  this  code  so  as  to  embrace  four  minor  codes,  Constitu- 

7  Bowring,  op.  ctt.,  XI,  pp.  48ff. 

8  Ibid.,  V,  pp.  8ff. 

8  Montague,  A  Fragment  on  Government,  p.  49. 

10  Bow  ring,  op.  eit.,  XI,  p.  85. 

11  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  85. 

12  /bid.,  XI  p.  86. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT      39 

tional,  Civil,  Penal,  and  Administrative.  The  end  he  had  in 
view  was  "  Conduciveness  to  the  maximum  of  the  aggregate  of 
happiness."13 

With  reference  to  the  result  of  Bentham's  codifying,  Montague 
says  that  it  did  not  consist  of  a  complete  system  but  of  many 
large  fragments  that  give  an  adequate  idea  of  what  the  system 
would  have  been  if  finished,  and  that  while  he  did  not  replace  nor 
reconstruct  English  law  as  a  whole,  he  furnished  many  valuable 
hints  which  have  been  adopted  into  English  law.14  What  Bent- 
ham  did  towards  legal  reform  proved  to  be  a  good  foundation 
upon  which  others  could  successfully  build.15  "When  we  re- 
collect how  much  that  Bentham  condemned  has  since  been 
abrogated,  and  how  much  that  Bentham  proposed  has  since  been 
adopted,  and  when  we  consider  how  generally  in  either  instance, 
the  results  have  justified  his  counsels,  we  must  allow  that  for 
industry,  for  acuteness,  and  for  an  enlarged  love  of  his  kind  he 
takes  one  of  the  highest  places  among  those  who  have  discussed 
the  theory  of  legal  reform. '  '16 

Bentham  declared  the  need  of  a  national  code  of  laws.  ' '  The 
universal  code  ought  to  be  promulgated  to  all.  The  particular 
codes  ought  to  be  set  before  the  classes  to  which  they  respectively 
refer."17  An  understanding  of  the  law  should,  according  to  Ben- 
tham, be  gained  in  school.  The  universal  code  should  be  made  the 
chief  book.  ' '  The  most  important  parts  of  it  might  be  committed 
to  memory,  and  repeated  as  a  catechism ;  that  for  example,  which 
contains  the  definition  of  offenses  and  the  reasons  for  their  being 
ranged  into  classes."18  Through  this  it  would  be  possible  for 
young  people  to  know  by  the  age  of  sixteen,  without  undue 
effort,  the  laws  of  the  land  better  than  the  gray-headed  lawyers 
of  Bentham's  day  knew  them.19  Those  who  planned  to  follow 
certain  employments  should  be  required  to  make  a  copy  of  the 
laws  pertaining  to  that  employment  as  an  aid  to  a  mastery  of 
the  subject.20  The  laws  should  also  be  presented  as  a  part  of 


is  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  86. 

14  Montague,  op.  cit.,  p.  43. 

15  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  XI,  p.  86. 

16  Montague,  op.  cit.,  pp.  57ff, 

17  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  158. 
IB  Ibid.,  I,  p.   158. 

19  Ibid.,  I.  p.  158. 

20  Ibid.,  I,  p.   158. 


40        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

divine  services,  being  read  through  several  times  a  year.  Laws 
prescribing  regulations  relative  to  public  places,  markets, 
theatres,  highways,  should  be  posted  in  those  places.  That  people 
of  various  nationalities  might  know  the  laws,  they  should  be 
translated  into  their  respective  languages.21 

In  order  to  make  a  study  of  the  laws  interesting  Bentham 
said  that  the  reasons  for  their  existence  should  be  given.22  The 
why  and  the  wherefore  ever  add  much  to  the  comprehension  of 
difficult  subjects.  "Without  reasons,  all  laws  may  be  condemned 
or  defended  with  equal  blindness. "  "  The  more  clearly  the  laws 
are  understood,  the  more  easily  will  they  be  retained.  The 
reasons  annexed  will  serve  as  a  kind  of  technical  memory :  they 
will  serve  as  a  species  of  cement,  by  which  to  unite  all  those 
regulations  which  would  otherwise  appear  as  fragments  and 
dispersed  ruins. ' '  Also,  laws  that  are  founded  upon  reason  make 
themselves  a  part  of  the  mind,  become  woven  into  the  logic  of  the 
people,  influence  generally  the  moral  nature  and  eventually 
govern  public  opinion.  Naturally  obedience  to  the  just  laws, 
known  and  understood,  would  follow  and  it  would  be  an 
obedience  scarcely  distinguishable  from  liberty. 

When  Bentham  lived  at  Lincoln's  Inn  he  had  come  into  close 
contact  with  the  working  of  England's  judicial  system.  Its 
wrongs  were  as  evident  to  him  as  the  wrongs  in  England 's  system 
of  laws.  As  the  legal  wrongs  were  largely  due  to  the  influence 
of  mystery  and  tradition,  so,  too,  were  the  judicial  wrongs. 
Magna  Charta's  statement,  "  Justice  shall  be  denied  to  no  man, 
justice  shall  be  sold  to  no  man,"23  was  not  being  carried  out  in 
practice.  "Denied  it  is,"  said  Bentham,  "to  nine-tenths  of  the 
people;  to  the  remaining  tenth  it  is  sold  at  an  unconscionable 
price — a  sale  by  the  state  as  pernicious,  in  point  of  political 
effect,  as  one  for  the  benefit  of  a  king  or  a  judge."2*  "That  in- 
strument of  power  which  calls  itself  a  Court  of  Justice  has  in 
every  community  without  exception,  had  for  the  object  of  its 
institution,  not  justice,  but  its  opposite,  injustice:  injustice  in 
the  shape  of  depredation  and  oppression."25 

21  Ibid.,  I,  p.  158. 

22  Ibid.,  I,  p.   161. 

23  Magna  Charta,  paragraph  40. 

24  Atkinson,  Jeremy  Bentham,  p.  130 
26  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  455. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    41 

The  judicial  system,  a  product  of  the  centuries  that  had  pass- 
ed, regarded  the  king  as  the  source  of  justice ;  it  had  a  multiplied 
number  of  functionaries  whose  duties  seemed  to  be  to  obtain  the 
continuance  of  respect  for  their  labors,  and  also  to  remain 
ignorant  of  conditions  that  might  reveal  the  enormity  of  wrong 
in  the  department  that  was  clothed  in  ermine.  When  a  matter 
of  controversy  arose  the  only  thing  to  do  was  to  confide  its 
untangling  to  those  who  professionally  represented  right  and 
justice.  The  endless  continuance  of  the  case,  due  to  the  varied 
processes  through  which  it  must  go,  was  not  questioned  but 
simply  accepted  as  necessary.  Neither  did  a  litigant  think  that 
the  expense  attendant  upon  a  suit  should  be  regarded  as  other 
than  necessary,  for  the  respect  which  he  had  been  reared  to 
attribute  to  all  who  had  become  administrators  of  justice  held 
his  thoughts  in  abeyance.  The  system  tended  to  develop  corrup- 
tion within  itself. 

These  wrongs  and  the  corruption  were  fully  evident  to  Bent- 
ham  and  he  did  not  hesitate  to  reveal  them  to  the  people.  So 
plain  to  him  was  it  that  utility  was  needed  for  all  concerned  that 
it  was  not  difficult  for  him  to  present  the  existing  ills,  to  explain 
the  needed  reforms,  and  to  offer  a  scheme  for  judicial  justice. 
This  scheme  he  presented  fully  in  his  Principles  of  Judicial 
Procedure,  and  Rationale  of  Evidence.  Referring  to  the  latter 
work  in  1829  Edward  Livingston,  who  had  been  Congressman 
from  New  York  State  and  state  representative  of  Louisiana, 
wrote  Bentham  as  follows:  "Hereafter  no  one  can,  in  Criminal 
Jurisprudence,  propose  any  favorable  change  that  you  have  not 
recommended,  or  make  any  wise  improvement,  that  your  superior 
sagacity  has  not  suggested."-6 

Some  of  the  existing  ills  which  Bentham  especially  emphasized 
were,  in  his  own  words:  (1)  "Imposition  of  law  taxes;  putting 
out  of  the  protection  of  the  law  all  those  who  are  unable  to  pay 
the  tax.  (2)  Imposition  of  law  fees,  payable  to  the  functionaries 
of  justice :  functionaries  employed  in  giving  such  security  as  is 
given  against  injury  from  internal  adversaries;  and  who  might 
be  sufficiently  paid  by  a  minute  part  of  the  expense  employed  in 
the  payment  of  those  engaged  in  giving  security  against  injury 
from  foreign  adversaries.  (3)  Audience  refused  to  the  parties 

id..   XI,   p   23. 


42        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

in  the  suit :  the  defendant  not  compelled  to  meet  the  pursuer  in 
the  presence  of  the  judge :  nor  the  pursuer  admitted  in  person 
to  state  to  the  judge  his  demand,  and  the  foundation  on  which  it 

rests."27 

As  remedies  he  proposed  the  removal  of  law  taxes,  and  law 
fees;  speedy  trial;  presence  at  the  trial  of  plaintiff,  defendant 
and  witnesses.  Bentham  began  at  the  very  foundation  itself  of 
judicature  and  arranged  a  system  for  its  development  that  would 
be  provocative  of  improvement.  Among  other  things  he  held 
that  judges  should  be  definitely  trained  through  education,  prac- 
tice, and  experience  for  the  administering  of  justice;28  that 
accessibility  to  the  court  of  justice  should  be  possible  any  hour 
of  the  day  or  night  for  Justice  should  sleep  only  when  Injustice 
sleeps ;  that  provisions  for  fair  cost  of  justice  should  be  made.29 

Bentham 's  plan  of  judicial  improvement  was  not  accepted 
when  he  presented  it,  by  those  most  vitally  concerned.  However, 
in  harmony  with  his  opinions  law  taxes  have  been  abolished,  law 
fees  have  been  reduced,  and  the  administration  of  justice  has 
been  placed  upon  such  a  basis  that  England  is  proud  of  her 
judicial  system.  England's  writers  admit  the  evils  that  used 
to  exist  and  they  set  forth  in  lengthy  discussions  the  wise  adjust- 
ments that  have  occurred  in  the  past  century.30 

As  John  Stuart  Mill  once  remarked:  "The  changes  which 
have  been  made  and  the  greater  changes  which  will  be  made,  in 
our  institutions,  are  not  the  work  of  philosophers,  but  of  the  in- 
terests and  the  instincts  of  large  portions  of  society  recently 
grown  into  strength.  But  Bentham  gave  voice  to  those  interests 
and  instincts;  until  he  spoke  out,  those  who  found  our  institu- 
tions unsuited  to  them  did  not  dare  to  say  so,  did  not  dare  con- 
sciously to  think  so ;  they  had  never  heard  the  excellence  of  those 
institutions  questioned  by  cultivated  men,  by  men  of  acknowledg- 
ed intellect ;  and  it  is  not  in  the  nature  of  uninstructed  minds  to 
resist  the  united  authority  of  the  instructed.  Bentham  broke 
the  spell.  It  was  not  Bentham  by  his  own  writings ;  it  was  Bent- 
ham  through  the  minds  and  the  pens  which  those  writings  fed — 

27  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  455. 

28  Ibid.,  II,  p.  22. 

29  Ibid.,  IX,  p.  515. 

30  Ibid.,  IX,  pp.  522ff. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    43 

through  the  men  in  more  direct  contact  with  the  world  into  whom 
his  spirit  passed. '  '31 


31  Mill.  John  Stuart.  Dissertations  and  Discussicns,  I,  p.  832. 


CHAPTER  V 

SOME  INFLUENCES  OF  BENTHAM  IN  ENGLAND'S 
SOCIAL  DEVELOPMENT 

Social  conditions  in  England  at  the  approach  of  the  nineteenth 
century  showed  crying  need  of  improvement.  The  distinct  line 
drawn  between  the  titled  and  mercantile  classes,  the  discrimina- 
tion that  existed  between  the  governing  and  the  governed,  were 
not  conducive  to  developing  equality  of  individuals  or  general 
welfare  and  happiness.  Until  privilege,  opportunity,  and  posi- 
tion, in  and  out  of  the  governments  should  become  possible  for  all 
without  requirement  of  noble  birth  and  hereditary  wealth,  that 
equality  which  is  the  basic  feature  of  democracy  could  not  exist. 
Feeling  that  under  existing  conditions  property  was  the  first 
essential  for  political  position,  and  considering  money  the  initial 
step  towards  the  possession  of  property,  the  laboring  classes 
strove  for  money  and  for  land.  The  attainment  of  the  goal  was 
placed  in  the  future  and  the  workers  energetically  applied  them- 
selves to  various  activities,  letting  matters  of  government  for  the 
time  being  rest  with  the  gentry.  England 's  great  mass  of  work- 
ing people  being  unenlightened  did  not  comprehend  wherein  they 
were  at  fault,  did  not  understand  that  by  their  application  to 
financial  gains,  meagre  as  these  were,  they  were  pushing  forward 
in  a  sordid  way  that  which  would  but  increase  the  evils  already 
existing  in  their  country's  social  conditions. 

From  his  knowledge  of  human  nature,  of  the  thinking  man's 
desires  and  ambitions,  and  of  the  government's  usurpation  of 
authority,  Bentham  saw  the  utter  impossibility,  under  the  cir- 
cumstances, of  the  laboring  man's  attainment  of  the  equality 
which  was  his  right.  He  apprehended  the  need  of  the  cooperation 
of  classes,  of  harmony  of  interests,  of  the  breaking  down  of  age- 
long barriers.  Bentham 's  view  was  that  the  welfare  of  a  country 
is  naturally  grounded  upon  the  condition  of  its  inhabitants,  and 
its  upward  development  in  various  channels  is  proportionate  to 
the  elimination  of  social  injustices.  As  he  analyzed  matters,  the 
social  wrongs  of  his  day  could  be  overcome  by  the  employment  of 

(44) 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    45 

his  principle  of  utility  inasmuch  as  it  was  based  upon  intellectual, 
educational,  practical,  ethical,  and  social  ideals,  ideals  that  tend- 
ed to  the  "greatest  happiness  of  the  greatest  number."  From 
the  development  and  application  of  these  ideals  would  come  the 
welfare  of  each  and  all. 

Again,  he  held  that  the  betterment  of  individuals  was  an  out- 
growth of  experience,  which  is  the  source  of  knowledge  and  the 
determinant  of  the  worth  of  moral  ideas.  Moral  ideas  have  a 
rank,  or  position,  which,  according  to  Bentham,  is  governed  by 
the  feeling  of  pleasure  or  pain,  and  he  attempted  to  show  that 
pleasure  or  pain  depends  upon  seven  circumstances  or  conditions, 
viz.,  intensity,  duration,  certainty  or  uncertainty,  propinquity 
or  remoteness,  fecundity,  purity,  and  extent.1  Lawmakers  con- 
sidering a  matter  of  legislation  scientifically  should  determine 
actually  the  sum  total  of  pleasures  and  pains  in  it,  balance  the 
pleasures  against  the  pains,  and  so  arrive  at  the  value.  This 
method  may  be  shortened  for  a  given  community  because,  owing 
to  the  process  of  evolution,  the  community  may  be  organized 
under  customs,  laws,  rules,  and  institutions  that  are  the  result 
of  many  and  varied  experiences.2 

Working  upon  that  which  was  already  in  existence,  Benthaia 
aimed  to  show  that  the  employment  of  utility  as  a  means  towards 
betterment  through  effective  legislation  was  intensely  practical; 
that  utility  could  be  so  embodied  in  state  and  national  legislation 
that  it  would  touch  directly  the  living  activities  of  men  in  a  way 
to  advance  society  to  higher  levels. 

As  an  aid  to  employing  the  pleasure-pain  standard  of  measure- 
ment in  acts  of  legislation,  Bentham  classified  fourteen  simple 
pleasures,  namely,  sense,  wealth,  skill,  amity,  good  name,  power, 
piety,  benevolence,  malevolence,  memory,  imagination,  expecta- 
tion, association,  relief;  and  twelve  simple  pains,  namely,  priva- 
tion, senses,  awkwardness,  enmity,  ill  name,  piety,  benevolence, 
malevolence,  memory,  expectation,  imagination,  association.3  Thus 
from  the  analysis  of  the  fundamental  elements  in  an  individual 's 
life,  Bentham  sought  to  construct  a  foundation  for  legislation, 
aiming  to  reach  results  for  the  people  by  having  legislators  so 


1  Bowring,  The  Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  I,  p.  16. 

2  Davidson,  Political  Thought  in  England,  p.  53. 
8  Bowringr,  (.p.  cit.,  I,  p.  17. 


46        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

responsive  to  his  scheme  that  legislation  would  be  enacted  with 
a  view  to  betterment  in  all  departments  of  social  life.4 

In  considering  the  problem  of  England's  poor,  one  very  soon 
sees  why  Bentham  had  so  great  an  interest  in  the  amelioration  of 
social  conditions.  The  legislation  enacted  for  the  poor  of  the 
realm  since  its  inception  had  not  secured  the  best  results  either 
for  the  unfortunate  poor  or  for  the  national  purse.  In  1536 
Parliament  had  passed  an  act  by  means  of  which  parishes  were 
required  to  provide  for  the  needs  of  their  own  mendicants.  A 
poor  rate,  as  the  term  came  to  be  understood  in  the  nineteenth 
century,  was  not  then  thought  of  and  the  money  needed  was 
obtained  by  voluntary  contributions;  "the  'collector'  appeared 
in  a  form  no  more  formidable  than  that  of  the  parish  priest,  who, 
from  his  pulpit,  exhorted  his  congregation  to  give  according  to 
their  means,  and  not  to  forget  the  poor-box  as  they  passed  out. '  '5 
The  year  1551  marked  the  first  step  in  the  system  of  poor  relief 
which  slowly  developed  through  the  succeeding  centuries. 
' '  Collectors  were  appointed  whose  duty  it  was  to  make  record  of 
the  name,  residence,  and  occupation  of  all  who  apparently  were 
able  to  give,  as  well  as  of  those  whose  helpless  distress  entitled 
them  to  relief.  In  the  words  of  the  ancient  enactment,  the  said 


4  It  is  interesting  to  note  in  Ward's  Applied  Sociology  the  manner  in  which  he  em- 
ploys two  words   coined  by  Bentham — minimization   and  maximization — in   describing 
the  "new  ethics."     "The  new  ethics  has  for  its  aim  the  minimization  of  pain  and  the 
maximization  of  pleasure."     Proceeding  in  his  discussion,  Ward  develops,   in  a   man- 
ner quite  Benthamic,  the  idea  that  the  "new  ethics" 'is  dynamic  and  "recognizes  that 
the  aummum  bonum  is  the  social  weal,  and  aims,  as  light  is  vouchsafed,  to  labor  for 
that  end."     Basing  a   part    of    Chapter   III   upon    the   "Claims     of    Feeling"     Ward 
reaches  a  summary  that  harmonizes  well  with  the  pleasure-pain  theory  of   Bentham. 
"In  a  pain  economy,  by  the  terms  of  the  definition,  the  pains   exceed  the  pleasures. 
If  we  give  the  pains  the  minus  and  the  pleasures  the  plus  sign,  the  algebraic  sum  is 
minus.    If  a  man  in  his  business  finds  that  the  debts  regularly  exceed  the  credits,  he 
concludes    that  he  is  conducting  his  business  at  a  loss.     Existence  may  be  looked  upon 
as  a  business.     If  its  debits  exceed  its  credits,  it   is  being  conducted  at  a  loss.  *  «   • 
Without   a  surplus    of   agreeable   over    disagreeable    feeling   existence    is    worthless    or 
worse  than  worthless.     With  such  a  surplus  it  has  a  value  exactly  proportional  to  the 
amount  of  that  surplus.     The  purpose  of  applied  sociology   is  to  point   out  the   way 
of  first  getting  rid  of  this  long-standing  deficit,  and  then  of  accumulating  the  max- 
imum possible  surplus." 

Ward  emphasizes  the  need  of  scientific  legislation  and  optimistically  states  that 
attractive  legislation  can  be  and  will  be  achieved.  Bentham  developed  clearly  the 
idea  of  scientific  legislation  and  the  later  writer  in  his  discussion  of  it  declares : 
"Nothing,  however,  worthy  of  the  name  of  scientific  legislation,  i.  e.,  legislative  in- 
vention in  the  interests  of  the  people,  is  possible  except  in  a  democracy  in  which 
all  the  people  are  intelligent,  so  that  the  representatives  of  the  people  are  persons  of 
considerable  mental  development." 

5  Greenwood,  Seven  Curses  of  London,   p.   425. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    47 

collectors  were  to  "gently  ask  every  man  and  woman,  that  they 
of  their  charity  will  give  weekly  to  the  relief  of  the  poor."  To 
give,  however,  remained  optional — no  more  severe  pressure  was 
brought  to  bear  against  a  "grudger"  than  that  the  minister  or 
churchwardens  were  sent  to  him  to  exhort  him  to  charity ;  but  so 
many  "curmudgeons"  remained  inexorable  that  the  voluntary 
system  continued  in  force  no  longer  than  twelve  years.  Then  the 
statute  regulating  poor  relief  was  remodelled ;  and  it  was  declar- 
ed good  law  that  any  person  able  to  contribute,  and  declining  to 
do  so,  might  be  summoned  before  a  justice,  who  would  tax  him 
according  to  his  discretion,  and  commit  him  to  gool  if  he  still 
remained  obdurate."6 

During  these  years  the  professional  beggars,  taking  advantage 
of  the  poor  fund,  increased  in  number  and  Parliament  attempted 
to  cope  with  them  by  passing  a  law  in  1572  stating  that ' '  all  per- 
sons whole  and  mighty  in  body,  able  to  labour,  not  having  land 
or  master,  nor  using  any  lawful  merchandise,  craft,  or  mystery, 
and  all  common  labourers,  able  in  body,  loitering  and  refusing 
to  work  for  such  reasonable  wage  as  is  commonly  given,  should, 
for  the  first  offense  be  grievously  whipped,  and  burned  through 
the  gristle  of  the  right  ear  with  a  hot  iron  of  the  compass  of  an 
inch  about."7 

Among  the  later  enactments  were  the  statutes  of  Elizabeth  for 
the  years  1598  and  1601,  under  the  provisions  of  which  the 
English  system  of  poor  relief  continued  for  practically  three 
hundred  years.  In  the  former  act  appeared  the  statement: 
*'  taxation  of  every  inhabitant,  parson,  vicar,  and  other,  and  of 
every  occupier  of  lands,  houses,  tithes,  mines,  etc.,  such  sums  of 
money  as  they  shall  require  for  providing  a  sufficient  stock  of 
flax,  hemp,  wool,  and  other  ware  or  stuff  to  set  the  poor  on  work, 
and  also  competent  sums  for  relief  of  lame,  blind,  old,  and  im- 
potent persons. '  '8  From  the  latter  act  three  great  principles  are 
derived:  "  (1)  that  every  parish  was  to  be  primarily  responsible 
for  the  maintenance  of  its  own  poor,  and  not  for  the  poor  of  other 
parishes;  persons  who  could  not  or  would  not  work  were  to 
remain  in  the  parish  in  which  they  were  born,  or  in  which  they 
had  lived  for  the  last  three  years;  (2)  that  the  means  for  the 

6  Ibid.,  p.  215. 

7  Ibid.,  pp.  215-216. 

8  Ibid.,  p.  216. 


maintenance  of  the  poor  was  to  be  provided  by  a  parochial  taxr 
to  be  imposed  upon  the  landed  property  of  the  parish  by  parish 
officers  as  a  general  and  uniform  burden;  (3)  the  administration 
of  the  system  was  to  be  vested  in  church-wardens,  and  in  two, 
three,  or  four  substantial  householders  to  be  appointed  annually 
by  justices  of  the  peace  as  'overseers'  of  the  poor."9  Naturally 
there  were  many  among  the  so-called  pauper  class  who  infringed 
upon  the  aims  of  the  laws,  and  many  among  the  overseers  who 
abused  charges  entrusted  to  them. 

Approaching  the  close  of  the  seventeenth  century  there  was 
the  Act  of  1691  "passed  to  lessen  'the  many  inconveniences' 
which,  said  the  preamble,  'do  daily  arise  by  reason  of  the  un- 
limited powers  of  the  overseers,  who  do  frequently  upon  frivolous 
pretences,  but  chiefly  for  their  own  private  ends,  give  relief  to 
what  persons  and  number  they  see  fit,'  "10  Gradually  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  poor  relief  was  transferred  more  and  more 
from  the  officers  of  the  parish  to  the  justices  ' '  until  in  the  latter 
half  of  the  eighteenth  century  the  Justices  were  practically 
supreme.11 

This  greatly  affected  the  social  life  of  England.  ' '  One  of  the 
most  mischievous  practices  was  that  which  was  established  by 
the  justices  for  the  county  of  Berks  in  1795,  when  in  order  to- 
meet  the  wants  of  the  labouring  population — caused  by  the  high 
price  of  provisions — an  allowance  in  proportion  to  the  number 
of  his  family  was  made  out  of  the  parish  fund  to  every  labourer 
who  applied  for  relief.  This  allowance  fluctuated  with  the  price 
of  the  gallon  loaf  of  second  flour,  and  the  scale  was  so  adjusted 
as  to  return  to  each  family  the  sum  which  in  a  given  number  of 
loaves  would  cost  beyond  the  price,  in  years  of  ordinary  abund- 
ance. This  plan  was  conceived  in  a  spirit  of  benevolence,  but 
the  readiness  with  which  it  was  adopted  in  all  parts  of  England 
clearly  shows  the  want  of  sound  views  on  the  subject.  Under  the 
allowance  system  the  labourer  received  a  part  of  his  means  of 
subsistence  in  the  form  of  a  parish  gift,  and  as  the  fund  out  of 
which  it  was  provided  was  raised  from  the  contributions  of  those 
who  did  not  employ  labourers  as  well  as  of  those  who  did,  their 
employers,  being  able  in  part  to  burden  others  with  the  payment 

8  Taylor,  Origin  and  Growth  of  the  English  Constitution,  II,  pp.  189-190. 

10  Redlich  and  Hirst,  Local  Government  in  England,  I,  p.   101. 

11  Ibid.,  I,  p.  101. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    49 

for  their  labour  had  a  direct  interest  in  perpetuating  the  system. 
Those  who  employed  labourers  looked  upon  the  parish  contribu- 
tion as  part  of  the  fund  out  of  which  they  were  to  be  paid,  and 
accordingly  lowered  their  rate  of  wages.  The  labourers  also 
looked  on  the  fund  as  a  source  of  wage.  The  consequence  was, 
that  the  labourer  looked  to  the  parish,  and  as  a  matter  of  right, 
without  any  regard  to  his  real  wants ;  and  he  received  the  wages 
of  his  labour  as  only  one  and  a  secondary  source  of  the  means 
of  subsistence."12 

The  statesmen  of  England  were  not  unaware  of  the  insuffi- 
ciency of  the  Poor  Laws  and  of  their  administration;  but  so 
long  as  additional  means  of  giving  to  those  who  took  adavantage 
of  the  funds  were  provided,  the  government  realized  that  the 
discontent  of  its  subjects  was  prevented  from  developing  into 
despair  and  revolution.13  Pitt's  Poor  Law  Bill  of  1796,  which 
aimed  at  still  further  allowances  for  the  poor  and  which  has 
been  stigmatized  as  "a  monstrosity  of  misguided  sentiment  and 
economic  fallacy,"14  called  forth  Bentham's  Observations  on  the 
Poor  Bill  Introduced  by  the  Right  Honourable  William  Pitt  in 
February,  1797.  The  Observation  is  a  critical  analysis  of  the 
various  clauses  of  the  bill.  A  citation  from  the  Cow-Money 
Clause  indicates  the  keenness  of  Bentham's  analytical  mind: 
' '  Hitherto  the  danger  of  profusion  has  confined  itself  to  income; 
it  now  threatens  capital.  In  the  preceding  clauses  the  allowances 
authorized,  how  much  soever  too  ample,  continued  to  be,  as  they 
are  under  the  existing  system,  in  the  first  instance  occasional 
only,  at  the  worst  gradual,  accommodated  as  to  their  rate  of  efflux 
to  the  influx  of  the  fund  from  which  alone  they  could  be  derived. 
Here  capital  is  given  under  the  very  name  of  capital,  and  as  a 
substitute  to  income.  The  pension  during  pleasure  is  instantly 
converted  into  a  pension  for  years  or  during  life,  and  that  pen- 
sion at  the  same  instant  bought  out  by  a  gross  sum,  leaving  the 
demand  for  a  fresh  pension  to  recur  at  any  time,  to  be  again 
bought  off,  and  so  toties  quoties.  The  spigot  was  there  opened, 
here  the  bunghole. 

"It  would  be  something  in  the  way  of  security,  though  surely 


12  Greenwood,  op.  cit.,  pp.  217-218. 

1 3  Redlich  and  Hirst,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  1 

14  Ibid.,  I  p.  88. 


50        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

not  much,  if  the  cow  were  safely  lodged  in  the  cow-house  of  the 
indigent  to  whom  the  possession  of  her  is  to  be  an  inexhaustible 
spring  of  affluence.  But  even  this  security,  slender  as  it  is,  is  not 
provided.  The  capital  is  to  be  advanced,  not  in  the  shape  of  the 
cow,  but  in  the  shape  of  hard  money,  with  which  the  object  of 
this  extraordinary  bounty  is  left  perfectly  at  liberty  to  lay  in  a 
fund  either  in  milk  or  gin  according  to  his  taste. 

"The  cow  dies  or  is  stolen,  or  (what  is  much  more  likely)  is 
supposed  to  be  stolen,  being  clandestinely  sold  to  an  obliging 
purchaser  at  a  distance.  What  is  to  be  done?  'Want  of  relief 
warranted  the  first  cow ;  the  same  cause  will  necessitate  a  second 
— limit  who  can  the  succeeding  series  of  cows :  The  disappearance 
of  the  first  cow  (it  may  be  said)  will  excite  suspicion;  the  dis- 
appearance of  a  second  cow  will  strengthen  suspicion;  true,  but 
upon  a  mere  suspicion  without  proof  will  a  family  be  left  to 
starve?"15 

Bentham  corresponded  with  some  of  the  most  influential  mem- 
bers of  Parliament  relative  to  Pitt's  bill.  He  insisted  that  was  a 
specimen  of  empiric,  not  scientific  legislation,  and  had  its 
measures  been  put  into  operation  for  any  length  of  time,  the 
results  would  have  been  more  disastrous  ' '  to  the  ultimate  welfare 
of  the  labouring  classes,  than  the  most  disastrous  revolution  of 
modern  times."16  Undoubtedly  the  Observations  materially 
aided  in  defeating  the  bill  of  1796. 

England's  effort  in  the  beginning  of  the  eighteenth  century  to 
institute  the  workhouse  as  a  help  in  solving  her  pauper  problem 
cannot  be  regarded  as  successful.  The  results  of  different 
measures  that  culminated  in  Gilbert's  Act  of  1782  had  evidenced 
the  failure  of  Parliament  to  meet  the  exigencies  of  the  times.  The 
legislation,  by  systematic  methods  and  upon  a  national  scale, 
had  fostered  pauperism.  The  industrial  revolution  which 
developed  during  the  Napoleonic  Wars  destroyed  the  old  con- 
servatism of  England  and  so  modified  the  economic  conditions 
that  the  errors  in  the  workings  of  Poor  Laws  were  accentuated. 
"The  war  had  left  an  enormous  national  debt,  a  depreciated 
paper  currency,  a  heavy  income  tax,  a  poor  law  causing  more 
misery  than  it  relieved,  and  a  system  of  agriculture  depending 
on  a  price  of  food  which  only  the  most  rigid  protection  could  keep 

15Bowring,  op.  cit.,  VIII,  p.  447. 
16  Ibid.,  VIII,  p.  440. 


up  in  times  of  peace. ' nz  ' '  The  poor  law  as  it  existed  in  full  vigor 
at  the  close  of  the  war,  went  further  than  any  other  human 
device  for  diminishing  the  funds  for  the  maintenance  of  labour, 
and  at  the  same  time  increasing  the  number  of  labourers."18 
"But  the  law  was  not  good  and  the  administration  was  much 
worse,  for  it  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Justices  of  the  Peace,  drawn 
from  the  landed  gentry,  and  embodying  that  spirit  of  autocratic 
dilettantism  which  marked  the  internal  government  of  England 
f rom  1800  to  1830.  "19 

Statesmen  of  England,  characterized  as  radical,  among  whom 
were  Romilly  and  Brougham,  were  earnest  in  their  labors,  in  and 
out  of  Parliament,  to  make  necessary  and  helpful  changes  in  the 
legislation.  The  chief  result  of  their  activities  was  the  appoint- 
ment of  a  commission  to  investigate  conditions  in  the  country. 
The  influence  of  Bentham  as  he  conversed  with  his  friends  in 
his  home,  or  as  he  worked  upon  his  manuscripts,  went  forth 
into  the  hall  of  Parliament.  Chadwick,  a  disciple  and  friend  of 
Bentham,  became  a  member  of  the  Poor  Law  Commission  in  1833 
and  he  worked  with  unceasing  energy  to  obtain  the  material 
necessary  for  the  Commission  Report.  The  Bill  of  1834,  the 
fruition  of  the  Commission's  work,  treated  the  subject  of  poor 
relief  as  a  whole  and  is  regarded  as  a  reform  more  extensive  and 
systematic  than  any  attempted  since  the  Act  of  1601. 20 

An  analysis  of  the  bill  of  1834  reveals  the  principles  of  Bent- 
ham  relative  to  pauperism  and  its  treatment  as  set  forth  in  his 
Constitutional  Code.  At  the  very  outset  of  their  work,  the  Com- 
missioners employed  the  scientific  method  suggested  by  Bentham ; 
e.  g.,  working  as  a  central  authority  they  divided  the  territory 
for  investigation  into  districts,  assigned  an  assistant  commission- 
er to  each  district,  and  required  a  detailed  report  from  each 
assistant.  From  the  phraseology  of  the  statute  one  readily  picks 
out  as  illustrations  of  points  developed  in  Bentham 's  Codes  (1) 
a  central  authority  of  administration;  (2)  the  poor  law  district 
superseding  the  parish;  (3)  the  determination  of  boundaries  con- 
forming with  geographical  convenience  rather  than  with  histori- 


17  Wallas.  Life  of  Francis  Place,  p.   158. 
isMartineau,   Thirty  Years'  Peace,  I,  p.  116. 
19  Redlich  and   Hirst,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.   102. 
•10  Ibid.,  I,  p.  108. 


52        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

cal  custom;  (4)  the  payment  of  officers  appointed  by  the  Board 
of  Guardians. 

A  comparison  of  costs  for  the  relief  of  the  poor  before  and 
after  1834  indicates  one  phase  of  the  Commissioners'  achieve- 
ment. ' '  The  average  annual  expenditure  on  the  relief  of  the  poor 
in  the  five  years  preceding  the  Act  of  1834  was  6,754,000  pounds, 
and  in  the  five  years  succeeding  the  Act,  3,567,000  pounds. '  '21  Re- 
ferring to  another  phase,  Wallas  says :  ' '  The  two  Local  Govern- 
ment Bills  (the  New  Poor  Law  of  1834  and  the  Municipal  Reform 
Bill  of  1835)  were  the  result  not  of  the  official  Whig  tradition  as 
represented  in  the  Cabinet,  but  of  '  philosophic  radicalism '  acting 
through  Royal  Commissioners.  Edwin  Chadwick,  Secretary  of 
the  Poor  Law  Commission  (1832-34),  and  Place's  friend,  Joseph 
Parkes,  Secretary  to  the  Municipal  Corporation  Commission 
(1833-35)  were  both  personal  disciples  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  and 
the  Bills  themselves  were  the  embodiment  of  principles  which  the 
Benthamites  had  discussed  for  twenty  years."22 

Many  years  before  1834  Bentham  had  said :  ' '  We  think  of  the 
poor  in  the  way  of  charity,  for  to  deal  out  charity  gratifies  not 
only  benevolence,  but  pride.  We  think  much  of  them  in  the  way 
of  charity,  but  we  think  little  of  them  in  the  way  of  justice.  Jus- 
tice, however,  ranks  before  charity;  and  they  would  need  less 
charity,  if  they  had  more  justice."23  The  bill  of  1834  lived 
through  the  opposition  that  met  its  promulgation ;  and  additional 
legislation  since  that  year  has  further  employed  the  element  of 
justice  which  Bentham  emphasized  as  essential  to  ameliorating 
social  conditions  in  England. 

Bentham  also  discussed  the  English  system  of  imprisonment 
for  debt.  In  this  system  as  it  was  employed  he  saw  much  that  was 
wrong  and  he  explained  different  matters  relative  to  it  in  minute 
detail  showing  how  reform  methods  might  be  introduced.  ' '  Im- 
prisonment for  debt  has  not  the  sanction  of  antiquity,"24  for 
there  was  a  time  when  it  did  not  exist  in  England.  Its  evolution, 
dates  from  the  Statute  of  Marlbridge,  52  Henry  III,  c.23,  and 
proceeds  until  "little  by  little  the  principle  of  the  right  of  one 
man  to  seize  the  body  of  another  in  an  execution  for  debt  became 

21  Ibid.,  I,  p.  110. 

22  Wallas.  Life  of  Francis  Place,  p.  330. 

23  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  II,  p.  579. 

24  Parry.  The  Law  and  the  Poor.  p.  40. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    53 

recognized  by  statutes  and  by  custom  until  the  wrongs  it  caused 
reached  such  a  scandalous  pitch  in  the  eighteenth  century  that 
some  reform  of  it  became  inevitable. '  '2S    With  the  passing  years 
harshness   and   cruelty   in   the   treatment   of   unfortunates   in 
debtors'    prisons    increased.     There    are    many    accounts    and 
descriptions  in  the  prison  annals  of  events  that  happened.  ' '  The 
tragedies  of  imprisonment  for  debt  occurred  but  they  took  place 
behind  closed  doors  and  the  world  only  heard  of  them  by  slow 
degrees.     At   length,   however,    the   constant   reptition   of   the 
miseries  of  the  poor  debtors  who  languished  in  prison,  wasting 
their  lives  and  eating  out  their  hearts  in  despair,  began  slowly 
to  convince  the  man  in  the  street  that  there  really  was  something 
wrong  with  the  world  and  that  the  cup  of  human  misery  of  some 
of  their  fellow  creatures  was  slopping  over  into  the  saucer  of 
despair. '  '26 

Towards  the  close  of  the  eighteenth  century,  debtors  formed  a 
large  part  of  the  population  of  England.  Frequently  the  families 
of  convicted  persons  went  to  live  in  the  jail.    Jails  were  mainly 
private  institutions  and  their  managers  stooped  to  all  ways  of 
earning  money  at  the  expense  of  the  inmates.    ' '  The  use  of  fetters 
was  universal,  although  even  then  deemed  illegal ;  all  alike,  tried 
and  untried,  male  and  female,  young  and  old,  were  laden  with 
chains  so  that  the  gaoler  might  secure  another  perquisite,  the 
bribe  he  demanded  for  easement  of  irons.     Prisons  were  dark 
because  their  managers  objected  to  pay  the  window  tax;  water 
was  costly,  and  therefore  scantily  supplied;  sanitation,  as  we 
understand  it,  did  not  exist  in  those  days  anywhere,  least  of  all 
in  the  gaols.     Pauper  prisoners,  by  far  the  largest  proportion, 
were  nearly  starved,  for  there  was  no  regular  allowance  of  food ; 
their  beds  of  old  littered  straw  reeked  with  filthy  exhalations; 
if  they  were  ill  the  doctors  feared  to  approach  them;  chaplains 
held  aloof  and  the  dying  were  left  to  the  ministrations  of  an 
occasional  self-devoted  layman."27    Bankruptcy,  insolvency,  in- 
debtedness, sent  many  to  these  jails  and  many  who  were  innocent 
of  crime  upon  their  entrance,  emerged  from  custody  possessed 
of  knowledge  that  was  far  from  beneficial.28 


25  ibid.,  p.  41. 

26  Ibid.,  p.  43. 

27  Traill,  Social  England,  V.  Sec.  II.  p.  657. 

28  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  I.  p.  429. 


54        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

Bentham  urged  careful  investigation  of  the  details  of  cases 
that  involved  the  problem  of  debt  in  any  of  its  forms,  and  the 
employment  of  punishment  commensurate  with  the  offense.  He 
distinguished  between  natural  pleas  of  humanity  favoring  the 
debtor  and  justice  due  the  creditor.  "Humanity  in  her  soft 
colours,  decks  the  breastplate  of  the  debtor's  champion:  Justice, 
in  her  grave  and  sombre  tints,  that  of  the  champion  of  the  in- 
jured creditors.  In  the  eye  of  the  man  of  humanity,  all  virtue 
is  on  the  debtor's  side — on  the  creditor's,  nothing  but  vice.  .  .  . 
If  the  blameless  debtor,  in  whose  instance  all  punishment  is  un- 
due, be  consigned  to  a  course  of  suffering  more  severe,  because 
more  protracted,  than  any  which  the  worst  of  criminals  would 
have  been  consigned  to  under  the  name  of  punishment, — it  is  be- 
cause it  would  be  requisite  to  learn,  whether  he  were  blameless 
or  blameable,  that  trouble  which  the  judges  have  one  and  all  been 

resolved  not  to  take Seeing  him  where  he  is,  'Let  him 

out ! '  says  the  man  of  sentiment ;  for  thus  far  does  the  force  of 
his  optics  penetrate.  Yes :  true  enough,  if  there  he  be,  and  have 
nothing  wherewith  to  pay,  nor  have  done  anything  for  which 
it  is  fit  he  should  be  punished,  the  sooner  he  is  let  out  the  better. 
But  do  you  know  if  he  have  wherewith  to  pay  ? — do  you  know  if 
he  have  done  that  for  which  he  ought  to  suffer  ? — and  above  all, 
do  you  know  how  and  why  he  came  there  ? — by  whose  power,  and 
to,  not  to  say  for,  whose  benefit?  These  are  of  the  number  of 
those  questions  which  would  be  invidious,  and  are  therefore  never 
asked."29 

Lord  Brougham  was  one  of  the  radicals  who  voiced  in  Parlia- 
ment the  ideas  of  Bentham  upon  this  subject.  He  presented  in 
detail  to  the  House  of  Lords  the  evils  in  the  English  system  of  im- 
prisonment for  debt.  "He  laid  down  the  principle  that  debt 
should  never  be  treated  as  a  crime  and  still  less  as  a  crime  to  be 
punished  at  the  sole  will  and  pleasure  of  the  creditor,  and  elo- 
quently called  upon  the  peers  to  wipe  out  this  foul  stain  from  our 
civil  code."30  Due  to  the  fact  that  the  matter  of  imprisonment 
for  debt  was  constantly  agitated,  changes  were  made  as  a  result 
of  the  work  of  commissioners.  In  1835,  a  comprehensive  bill  for 
the  abolition  of  imprisonment  of  debtors  was  introduced  into 


29  Ibid.,  VI.  pp.   ISOff. 

80  Parry,  op.  eit.,  p.  48. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    55 

Parliament.  The  Westminster  Review,  commenting  on  this  bill, 
said:  "If  the  Ministerial  Bill  for  the  abolition  of  the  Law  of 
Imprisonment  pass  into  a  Law,  its  effects  will  not  be  second  in 
importance  to  the  Reform  Act  itself. '  '31 

Parliament  discussed  the  abolition  of  arrest  on  mesne  process 
in  1837  and  it  was  legislated  out  in  1839.  Bentham  had  strongly 
condemned  the  mesne  process32  and  Atkinson  says  its  ultimate 
abolition  may  be  credited  to  him.33  "Mesne  process,  translated 
into  English,  means  middle  process,  and  the  idea  was  to  lock  a 
defendant  up  in  the  middle  of  a  trial  and  keep  him  there  in  case 
it  turned  out  at  the  end  of  the  proceedings  that  he  owed  the 
money.  It  was  as  popular  with  the  sharks  of  the  eighteenth  cen- 
tury as  the  present  imprisonment  is  with  money-lenders  and 
tally-men  of  to-day.  Any  person  who  would  make  an  affidavit 
that  another  owed  him  twenty  pounds  or  more  could  lock  him 
up  pending  the  trial  and,  unless  the  victim  could  find  the  money 
and  pay  it  into  Court,  he  remained  in  the  sponging  house  until 
the  trial  came  on.34 

Soon  after  the  abolition  of  the  mesne  process,  a  commission 
was  appointed  to  investigate  the  entire  matter  of  imprisonment 
for  debt.  Finishing  the  work  it  recommended  abolition.  A  bill 
introduced  in  1844  set  forth  the  need  of  distinguishing  between 
blameless  debtors  and  defrauders.  Finally  the  Debtors  Act  of 
1869  became  a  law,  and  it  has  met  in  a  large  measure  the  demands 
that  had  so  long  been  urged.  There  are  defects  in  the  applica- 
tion of  clauses  in  this  act  and  there  are  still  opponents  of  the 
abolition  of  imprisonment  for  debt,  but  the  change  from  indis- 
criminate imprisonment  under  former  regulations  to  the  enact- 
ments now  in  force  is  in  the  right  direction.35  Bentham 's  chal- 
lenge, "People  of  England!  when  will  you  open  your  eyes — 
how  long  will  ye  be  the  dupes  of  sophistry,  hypocrisy,  and  mas- 
querade ? '  '36,  has  borne  fruit  in  the  reform  of  a  system  which  has 
such  a  dark  and  distressing  history. 

' '  Crime  has  been  well  defined  as  a  failure  to  abide  by  or  live 
up  to  a  standard  deemed  essential  by  society.  Criminals  are 

31  Westminster  Review,  Vol.  XX,  p.  354. 

32  Bowring,  op.  cit..  Vol.  VI,  p.  179. 

33  Atkinson,  op.   cit.,   p.   232. 

34  Parry,  op.  cit.,  p.  45. 

35  Ibid.,  pp.  49ff. 

36  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  VI,  p.   178. 


56        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

such  by  accident  or  inclination,  and  under  a  perfect  system  of 
government  they  would  be  saved  from  the  one  and  cured  of  the 
other."37  Crime,  an  evil  to  society,  a  menace  to  development,  has 
from  earliest  times  been  combated  by  the  infliction  of  physical 
pain  as  a  corrective.  Bentham  analyzed  this  subject,  and  by 
estimating,  according  to  his  scheme,  the  balance  struck  in  the 
pleasure-pain  theory  he  showed  how  punishment  might  be  em- 
ployed so  as  to  result  in  benefit  to  mankind.  Granted  that  there 
is  pleasure  to  the  agent  in  committing  a  crime,  the  punishment 
as  a  corrective  result  to  society  must  outweigh  that  pleasure  in 
order  to  offset  the  pain  that  the  crime  inflicted  upon  society. 

Bentham  wrote  exhaustively  upon  the  subject  of  crime,  enter- 
ing into  its  various  phases  and  its  punishments.38  He  understood 
from  his  study  of  the  subject,  and  from  his  knowledge  of  English 
legal  proceedings  dealing  with  crime,  that  in  existing  conditions 
there  was  much  averse  to  his  guiding  principle,  utility.  In  the 
discussion  of  criminology  he  stated  five  objects  that  should  be 
derived  from  punishments  inflicted:  (1)  prevention  of  similar 
offenses,  (2)  reformation,  (3)  incapacitation,  (4)  compensation 
or  satisfaction  to  the  person  injured,  (5)  economy.39  Since  it 
falls  to  the  province  of  legislators  to  fix  the  penalties  for  wrong- 
doing, they  should  keep  in  mind  the  need  of  certainty  and  im- 
partiality in  punishment.  "The  more  completely  the  scale  of 
punishments  is  rendered  certain,  the  more  completely  all  the 
members  of  the  community  are  enabled  to  know  what  to  expect. 
It  is  the  fear  of  punishment,  in  so  far  as  it  is  known,  which  pre- 
vents the  commission  of  crime.  An  uncertain  punishment  will 
therefore  be  uncertain  in  its  effects."40 

Bentham 's  exposition  of  the  subject  of  crime  and  capital  pun- 
ishment, strongly  supported  by  historical  fact,  indicates  that  the 
general  welfare  of  man  was  far  from  realization.  The  large 
pauper  class  who  were  driven  by  poverty  to  stealing ;  the  difficul- 
ty attending  the  obtaining  of  bare  necessities  in  the  way  of  food, 
which  increased  the  number  of  poachers ;  the  difficulties  of  travel, 
which  swelled  the  number  of  highway  robbers;  the  dark,  un- 

37  Traill.  op.  cit.,  VI,  Sec.  II.  p.  853. 

38  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  I,  pp.  Sl-168. 

39  Ibid.,  I,  pp.  491ff. 

40  Ibid.,  I.  p.  516. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    57 

lighted  streets  of  urban  centers,  which  aided  in  the  commission 
of  crimes;  all  these  conditions  had  multiplied  the  number  of 
offenses  for  which  the  death  penalty  was  inflicted.  "Barbarous 
as  were  the  provisions  of  our  criminal  code  at  this  period,  it  is, 
perhaps,  worth  while  to  note  that  they  had  become  largely  in- 
operative. Judges  and  jurors  alike  rebelled  against  a  too  rigor- 
ous enforcement  of  the  law;  as  is  ever  the  case,  any  attempt  to 
«xact  a  penalty  grossly  disproportioned  to  the  offense  served 
only  to  shock  the  general  sense  and  to  excite  a  spirit  of  com- 
passion with  the  accused.  Between  1803  and  1810  great  numbers 
of  prisoners  were  found  not  guilty  and  discharged ;  and,  though 
no  less  than  1872  persons  were  sentenced  to  death  for  petty  thefts 
and  divers  small  offenses  against  property,  one  only  of  those 
sentences  was,  in  fact,  executed."41 

From  1808  to  1816  Romilly  introduced  in  Parliament  a  num- 
ber of  bills  dealing  with  the  mitigation  of  the  death  penalty.  His 
bill  of  1808  abolished  capital  punishment  for  the  offense  of  steal- 
ing from  a  person  privately  to  the  value  of  five  shillings.  His 
measures  of  1811  were  rejected  and  Lord  Ellenborough's  critic- 
ism, bewailing  the  fact  that  the  desire  existed  which  favored  the 
changing  of  laws  of  long  standing,  shows  how  hard  it  was  to 
yield  in  a  matter  backed  by  the  authority  of  tradition.42  Romilly 's 
bill  of  1816  proposed  abolishing  the  death  penalty  for  shoplifting 
to  the  value  of  five  shillings.  Statistics  cited  by  him  showed  that 
in  1785  twenty  persons  were  executed  the  same  morning  in 
London  for  this  offense,  and  that  then  (1816)  a  child  not  ten 
years  of  age  was  incarcerated  in  Newgate  awaiting  the  carrying 
out  of  the  fearful  penalty  for  the  same  offense.  Romilly 's  bill 
failed  to  pass  because  the  members  of  Parliament  argued  that 
to  lessen  the  penalty  would  increase  the  number  of  criminals. 

The  preface  to  the  Newgate  Calendar  of  1824  set  forth  the 
conditions  existing  as  seen  by  contemporaries :  ' '  The  penal  laws 
of  the  British  Empire  are,  by  foreign  writers,  charged  with  being 
too  sanguinary  in  the  cases  of  lesser  offenses.  They  hold  that  the 
punishment  of  death  ought  to  be  inflicted  only  for  crimes  of  the 
highest  magnitude ;  and  philanthropists  of  our  own  nation  have 
accorded  with  their  opinion.  Such  persons  as  have  had  no  oppor- 


*1  Atkinson,  Jeremy  Bentham,  p.   145. 
42  Martineau,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  101. 


58        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

tunity  of  inquiring  into  the  subject  will  hardly  credit  the  asser- 
tion that  there  are  above  one  hundred  and  sixty  offenses  punish- 
ed by  death."43  Bentham  was  among  the  philanthropists  men- 
tioned. He  was  one  of  the  first  and  one  of  the  chief  agitators 
against  the  idea  that  laws  "scarcely  ever  carried  into  execution 
would  operate  through  the  influence  of  what  they  called  '  a  vague 
terror.'  As  if  any  terror,  as  a  preventive  or  a  motive  to  good,, 
was  ever  vague.  The  system  was  entirely  kept  in  existence  by 
the  incompetence  and  idleness  of  the  law-makers  and  the  law 
administrators."44  Bentham  claimed  "that  the  certainty  of  a 
comparatively  slight  penalty  would  prove  a  far  more  efficient 
check  than  the  possibility  of  a  most  extravagant  punishment."** 
Plus  on  peur  augmenter  la  certitude  de  la  peine,  plus  on  peut  en 
diminuer  la  grandeur*6 

Constant  agitation  usually  yields  results.  Consequently  dur- 
ing the  ministries  of  Peel  and  Russell,  successive  measures  were 
passed  that  reduced,  from  time  to  time,  the  number  of  offenses 
for  which  capital  punishment  might  be  inflicted.  The  slight 
changes  for  which  Romilly  asked  in  the  first  quarter  of  the 
nineteenth  century,  the  improvements  presented  in  the  writings 
of  Bentham  through  the  first  third  of  the  century,  were  more 
than  attained  by  1868  when  public  executions  were  prohibited 
by  law.47  English  lawmakers  in  enacting  legislation  which  has 
so  greatly  improved  the  criminal  law  may  not  have  deliberately 
weighed  matters  according  to  Bentham 's  pleasure-pain  theory, 
but  in  the  radical  change  developed  within  a  generation  after  his 
death  his  influence  can  clearly  be  traced. 

A  parallel  development  to  reform  in  the  law  of  crime  is  Bent- 
ham's  work  in  connection  with  prison  reform.  While  visiting- 
his  brother  in  Russia  in  1786  or  1787,  he  was  much  impressed 
with  his  brother's  scheme  for  a  large  workshop.  With  this  as  a 
basis  he  wrote  a  series  of  letters  which  embodied  his  ideas  upon 
the  Panopticon.48  This  word,  derived  from  two  Greek  words 
meaning  "everything"  and  "place  of  sight,"  is  the  name  which. 


*3  Parry,  op.  cit.,  p.  189. 

44  Martineau,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.   103. 

45  Atkinson,  op.  cit.,  p.  145. 

46  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  II,  p.  887. 

47  Cross,  A  History  of  England,  p.  908. 

48  Bowring.  op.  cit.,  IV,  pp.  37-66. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT     59 

Bentham  gave  to  the  prison  building  which  would  meet 
England's  needs  much  better  than  Newgate  or  any  of  the  many 
houses  that  served  as  places  of  detention. 

Numerous  accounts  have  portrayed  the  evils  of  the  English 
prison  system,  its  utter  lack  of  care  and  of  attention  to  the  in- 
mates of  prisons,  and  its  very  general  influence  in  spreading 
crime.49  Bentham  studied  the  problem  fully,  investigating  the 
discipline  and  management  which  Howard  had  revealed.  He 
devised  the  plan  of  a  prison  building  circular  in  form,  with  cells 
so  arranged  that  they  could  be  seen  from  the  center  of  the  build- 
ing.50 The  inmates,  separated  from  each  other,  employed,  given 
an  opportunity  to  learn  useful  trades,  and  provided  with  means 
of  becoming  educated,  were  to  be  considered  as  worthy  of  help. 
Charts,  descriptions,  explanations,  made  the  author's  system 
clear.  When  he  presented  his  plan  to  the  government  authori- 
ties, his  offer  to  erect  a  building  and  undertake  its  management 
was  accepted  and  Bentham  went  so  far  as  to  purchase  a  site  and 
begin  the  work  of  construction.  "The  design  of  building  a 
Panopticon  prison  lingered  from  1791  to  1813,  when  by  the  erec- 
tion of  another  prison,  without  any  of  the  advantages,  and  more 
than  ten  times  the  expense,  it  was  finally  extinguished."51  It 
seems  that  Bentham  had  incurred  the  displeasure  of  George  III 


49  Ashton,  Dawn  of  the  XIX  Century  in  England,  pp.  453-459  ;  Ashton,  Eighteenth 
Century  Waifs,  pp.  227ff ;  Roscoe,   The  English  Scene  in  the  XVIII  Century,  p.   275. 

50  Investigation  of  the   general  condition   of   American  prisons  made  under  the  di- 
rection  of   the   American    Prison   Association   reveals,   as   late   as   the   present    decade, 
startling  facts.     'Little  children  are  kept  in  rooms  with  polluted  and  diseased  adults ; 
a  thoughtless  lad  is  thrust  by  the  hand  of  our  country's  law  in  the  school  of  vice  and 
crime,  taught  by  trained  scoundrels  ; — a   poor   insane  victim  of   brain    disorder  howls 
all    night   in   company   with    ruffians ;   an   honest   fellow,    unable  to   pay   a   fine   for   a 
spre«  is  locked  in  with  burglars  and  thieves." — Survey,  Vol.  34,  p.  84. 

Compare  with  plan  presented  for  cell  house  at  Joliet,  Illinois.  "Mr.  Zimmerman 
proposes  to  build  circular-shaped  cell  houses,  about  120  feet  in  diameter,  placing  the 
cells  against  the  cell  house  wall,  thus  assuring  direct  light  and  air.  Now  comes  the 
novelty.  Instead  of  having  an  open  front  of  steel  bars,  heavy  glass  will  be  fitted  in 
the  open  space  between  these  bars  so  as  to  make  a  completely  closed  room  out  of  the 
cell.  A  full  view,  however,  of  this  room  is  possible  from  a  central  point.  This  cen- 
tral point  is  a  steel  shaft  in  the  center  of  the  cell  house,  enclosing  a  circular  stair- 
way. The  stairway  will  be  as  high  as  the  highest  tier  of  cells,  and  from  a  position 
half-way  up  the  circular  stairway,  which  is  completely  sheathed  with  steel,  the  guard 
within  the  "conning  tower"  has  a  full  view  of  each  and  every  cell,  at  the  mere  turn 
of  his  head." — Survey,  Vol.  27,  p.  1576. 

The  new  State  Prison  of  Illinois  at  Joliet  consists  of  eight  cell  houses  grouped 
around  a  central  dining  room.  The  plans  of  these  buildings  reveal  many  point*  that 
tally  with  Bentham's  Panopticon  scheme.  (See  Scientific  American,  Vol.  116,  p.  65, 
Jan.  13,  1917.) 

SiBowring,  op.  eft.,  IV,  p.  171. 


60        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

by  his  "Plan  for  the  Judicial  Establishment  in  France"  and  the 
king  withdrew  his  support.  The  long  years  of  thought  and 
anxiety,  the  efforts  made  to  win  the  approval  of  influential  states- 
men— all  ended  in  keen  disappointment  and  loss.  Parliament 
finally  allowed  £23,000,  by  no  means  a  full  monetary  restoration 
for  the  funds  Bentham  had  advanced  in  the  enterprise. 

Wilberforce  said  of  Bentham  in  1811:  "Never  was  anyone 
worse  used  than  Bentham;  I  have  seen  the  tears  run  down  the 
cheeks  of  that  strong-minded  man  through  vexation  at  the  press- 
ing importunity  of  creditors  and  the  insolence  of  official  under- 
lings, when,  day  after  day,  he  was  begging  at  the  Treasury,  for 
what  was,  indeed,  a  mere  matter  of  right.  How  indignant  did 
I  often  feel  when  I  saw  him  thus  treated  by  men  infinitely  his 
inferiors."52  In  1830-31  Bentham  wrote  the  History  of  the  War 
between  Jeremy  Bentham  and  George  the  Third.  By  one  of  the 
Belligerents,  a  book  containing  an  account  of  the  Panopticon 
scheme.53 

In  1835  a  commission  was  appointed  to  investigate  prison  con- 
ditions. Commenting  upon  its  work,  the  Westminster  Review 
said:  "There  are  probably  many  questionable  points,  especially 
such  as  relate  to  the  condition  of  the  most  unfortunate  classes; 
and  of  this  sort,  the  treatment  of  the  poor  creatures  who  are 
driven  by  poverty  to  crime,  deserves  the  most  anxious  consid- 
eration. If  indeed  worthier  motives  did  not  supervene,  there  is 
yet  the  palpable  one  of  the  costly  worthlessness  of  the  present 
system  whereby  the  comparatively  innocent  is  destined,  by  con- 
tact with  hardened  vice,  to  be  doomed  to  lasting  crime.  In  the 
Report  there  are  several  excellent  plans  on  the  Panopticon  system 
of  Bentham."54 

During  the  succeeding  years  of  the  nineteenth  century  the  law- 
makers of  England  have  given  much  consideration  to  prison 
reform.  They  have  made  possible  the  reformation  of  wrong- 
doers, and  have  looked  to  the  education  of  young  unfortunates  as 
a  means  of  lessening  criminal  tendencies.  "But  uniformity  in 
prison  discipline  has  been  a  potent  factor,  and  has  told  upon  the 
contingent  floating  in  and  out  of  prison.  The  convicted  offender 

C2  Wilberforce,  Life  of  Wilberforce,  II,  p.  71. 

53  Bowring,  op.  cit..  XI,  p.  96. 

54  Westminster  Review,  Vol.  23,  p.  427. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    61 

is  certain  that  wherever  he  may  find  himself  he  will  be  under  pre- 
cisely the  same  rules,  will  eat  the  same  scanty  fare,  do  much 
the  same  labour.  There  is  no  distinction  now  between  localities ; 
the  punishment  is  alike  for  all.  No  administrative  reform  in 
recent  years  has  been  more  beneficial  than  the  concentration  of 
prison  management  under  the  central  authority  of  the  State.  This 
was  effected  by  the  Prisons  Act  of  1877,  when  full  powers  were 
vested  in  a  Board  of  Prison  Commissioners.  Great  economy  was 
the  immediate  result,  for  prisons  were  at  once  cut  down  in  num- 
ber from  114  to  56  with  a  corresponding  saving  on  staff,  *  *  * 
The  prisons  of  England  can  challenge  the  most  searching  inves- 
tigation, and  all  who  have  compared  them  with  the  best  in  foreign 
countries  must  admit  that  ours  are  inferior  to  none. '  '55 

It  has  been  well  said  that,  although  Bentham  himself  was  not 
permitted  to  carry  out  the  work  to  which  he  gave  so  large  a  part 
of  his  time,  yet  he  must ' '  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  great  reform- 
ers of  prisons  and  an  eminent  successor  to  Howard."56  In  his 
many  letters  and  tracts  on  the  subject  and  in  his  Principles  of 
Penal  Law  will  be  found  the  germs  of  most  modern  reforms  in 
regard  to  the  treatment  of  criminals."57 


55  Trail!,  op.  eft.,  VI,  Sec.  II,  pp.  853ff. 

56  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  IV,  p.  271. 

57  Among  these  reforms  may  be  mentioned  the  following: 

1835,  employment  of  the  principle  establishing  separate  cells  for  criminals ; 
1837,  Act  of  Parliament  by  which  the  number  of  crimes  for  which  capital  punish- 
ment could  be  inflicted  was  reduced  to  six ; 

1847,  Act  of  Parliament  creating  the  Poor  Law  Board ; 

1868,  prohibition   of  public  executions  ; 

1869,  abolition  of  imprisonment  for  debt ; 

1871,  Act  of  Parliament  creating  the  Local  Government  Board ; 

1877,  the  Prisons  Act ; 

1898,  Criminal  Evidence  Act ; 

1903,  Poor  Prisoners  Defence  Act;  and 

1907,  Court  of  Criminal  Appeal  Act. 


CHAPTER  VI 

BENTHAM'S  FRIENDS  AND  ENGLISH  EEFORM 

"The  history  of  any  definite  'school'  of  philosophic  or  political 
opinion  will  generally  show  that  its  foundation  was  made  possi- 
ble by  personal  friendship.  So  few  men  devote  themselves  to 
continuous  thought  that  if  several  think  on  the  same  lines  for 
many  years  it  is  almost  always  because  they  have  encouraged 
each  other  to  proceed.  And  varieties  of  opinion  and  tempera- 
ment are  so  infinite,  that  those  who  accept  a  new  party  name, 
and  thereby  make  themselves  responsible  for  each  other's  utter- 
ances, are  generally  bound  by  personal  loyalty  as  well  as  by 
intellectual  agreement. 

"The  'Benthamite'  or,  as  it  became  later,  the  'Utilitarian' 
school  *  *  *  was  no  exception  to  this  rule.  Bentham's  writings 
from  the  year  1776,  when  he  published  the  Fragment  on  Govern- 
ment, would  in  any  case  have  had  their  effect.  But  the  enormous 
influence,  which,  towards  the  end  of  his  life,  he  exerted  upon 
liberal  thought  in  England,  was  very  largely  due  to  the  care 
which  he  then  took  to  secure  that  a  few  able  men  should  always 
enjoy  the  most  complete  intimacy  with  himself  and  each  other."1 

Jeremy  Bentham  numbered  among  his  friends  statesmen  of 
many  countries.  As  the  years  passed  he  entertained  in  his  home 
those  whom  he  esteemed.  His  hospitality  was  delightful,  his 
companionship  helpful,  and  his  influence  inspiring.  He  was  a 
keen  judge  of  human  nature,  and  he  singled  out  for  his  most 
favored  friends  men  who  promulgated  his  teachings.  It  was 
decidedly  for  humanity's  good  that  the  Hermit  of  Queen's 
Square  Place  received  frequently  into  his  home  his  disciples, 
and,  by  conversing  with  them  there,  became  the  indirect  initiator 
of  bills  that  have  made  for  social  and  political  progress. 

In  his  boyhood  and  young  manhood  Bentham  did  not  have 
close  friends.  The  publication  of  his  Fragment  on  Government 
paved  the  way  for  the  formation  of  a  warm  friendship  with  the 

1  Wallas,  Life  of  Francis  Place,  p.   65. 

(62) 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    63 

Earl  of  Shelburne.  However,  Shelburne  did  not  meet  the  author 
until  1781  after  Blackstone  had  passed  away.  His  first  visit  to 
Bowood  proved  to  be  Bentham's  introduction  to  influential 
friends.  Lord  Shelburne  as  a  careful,  attentive,  and  considerate 
host  made  this  visit  very  pleasant.2  As  one  who  understood 
Bentham's  worthy,  although  shy,  manliness,  he  graciously,  yet 
tactfully,  extended  other  invitations  to  him.3  An  extract  from 
one  of  Shelburne 's  letters,  written  in  June,  1788,  shows  how 
well  the  former  prime  minister  understood  the  obscure  tenant  of 
Lincoln 's  Inn :  ' '  I  solemnly  assure  you,  that  it  has  been  not  only 
on  my  mind,  but  upon  my  heart,  to  find  out  this  parson's  house 
at  Hendon,  and  to  pay  my  court  to  you,  not  to  thank  you  for 
your  magnificent  present  of  not  only  a  most  magnificent,  but 
very  useful  map  in  the  present  situation,  because  I  know  your 
nature  makes  you  above  accepting  acknowledgments;  but  to  tell 
you  how  much  we  wish  to  see  you  at  Bowood.  I  am  so  tired  of 
the  whole  human  race,  that  we  propose  to  bury  ourselves  for  some 
time ;  but  as  happily  all  desires  return  after  a  certain  abstinence, 
you  will  find  me  very  happy  to  make  peace  with  my  fellow  crea- 
tures through  you,  and  to  begin  my  return  to  society  in  London, 
by  profiting  of  yours  for  some  time  in  the  country. '  '*  The  close 
intimacy  of  these  two  friends  is  manifested  by  the  fact  that  when 
Shelburne  was  bereaved  of  Lady  Shelburne  in  1789  Bentham  was 
the  only  male  friend  to  whom  he  turned  for  consolation.5 

From  Bentham's  own  pen  a  description  of  Lord  Shelburne  can 
he  obtained:  "His  manner  was  very  imposing,  very  dignified, 
and  he  talked  with  vague  generalities  in  the  House  of  Lords  in  a 
very  emphatic  way,  as  if  something  grand  were  at  bottom,  when 
in  fact  there  was  nothing  at  all."6  "Yet  there  was  about  him 
a  good  deal  of  sympathy,  of  intelligent  sympathy;  a  curious 
mixture  too  of  what  was  natural  and  what  was  factitious.  He  had 
a  sort  of  systematic  plan  for  gaining  people.  "T  "  Lord  Lansdowne 
had  a  way  of  talking  in  fits  and  starts.  His  mind  seemed  always 
in  a  state  of  agitation  with  the  passion  of  ambition  and  the  desire 


-  Bowring,   The  Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  X,  pp.  88-114. 

3  Ibid.,  X,  p.  195,  279,  306. 

4  Ibid.,  X,  p.  183 

5  Ibid.,  X,  p.  88. 

6  Ibid.,  X,  p.   116. 

7  Ibid.,  X,  p.  117. 


64        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

of  splendour.  He  was  never  much  at  ease,  for  he  always  outran 
the  constable,  and  involved  himself  monstrously  in  debt.  "8  "  Lord 
Shelburne  had  a  wildness  about  him,  and  conceived  groundless 
suspicions  about  nothing  at  all. "9  "He  caught  hold  of  the  most 
imperfect  scrap  of  an  idea,  and  filled  it  up  in  his  own  mind — 
sometimes  correctly — sometimes  erroneously."  "He  was  a 
favorite  of  the  kind,  who  promised  to  make  him  a  duke."10 

Bentham  was  strongly  attached  to  Lord  Shelburne  and  was 
always  grateful  for  the  aid  that  he  had  received  from  the  states- 
man. Crediting  Shelburne  with  having  made  him  think  that 
he  could  do  something,  Bentham  more  and  more  after  1781  gave 
attention  to  the  development  and  the  spread  of  his  ideas.  Study- 
ing, thinking,  writing,  traveling,  in  the  truest  sense  a  citizen  of 
the  world,  Bentham 's  influence  increased.  After  he  settled  at 
Queen 's  Square  Place,  those  whom  he  entertained  as  guests  were, 
through  a  period  of  more  than  forty  years,  the  personal  carriers 
of  his  doctrines  to  the  outside  world  and  into  the  halls  of  Par- 
liament. In  considering  the  members  of  Parliament  who  were 
Bentham 's  friends,  knowledge  is  gained  as  to  how  his  principles 
and  theories  were  disseminated. 

Samuel  Romilly  (1757-1818),  the  distinguished  advocate,  was 
introduced  to  Bentham  by  George  Wilson.  This  acquaintance, 
formed  before  Bentham  made  his  visit  to  Russia,  later  ripened 
into  warmest  friendship.  It  was  their  mutual  respect  for  animals 
that  was  the  bond  of  union  between  the  two  men — a  sentiment 
of  tenderness  that  naturally  meant  more  when  applied  to  the  dis- 
cussions of  public  issues.11  Lord  Brougham  said  that  Romilly 
' '  looked  up  to  Mr.  Bentham  with  the  almost  filial  reverence  of  a 
pupil  for  hs  tutor."12  Bentham 's  characterization  of  Romilly 
is:  "He  was  a  man  of  great  modesty, — of  few  words, — of  no 
conversation."13  "Few  persons  have  ever  attained  celebrity  of 
name  and  exalted  station  in  any  country,  or  in  any  age,  with 
such  unsullied  purity  of  character,  as  this  equally  eminent  and 
excellent  person.  His  virtue  was  stern  and  inflexible,  adjusted, 
indeed,  rather  to  the  rigorous  standard  of  ancient  morality  than 

8  Ibid.,  X,  p.  186. 

9  Ibid.,  X,  p.  117. 

10  Ibid.,  X.  p.  116. 

11  Ibid.,  X,  p.  186. 

12  Hansard,  Parliamentary  Debate*,  38.  p.  1164. 

13  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  X,  p.  186. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCEATIC  DEVELOPMENT    65 

to  the  less  ambitious  and  less  elevated  maxims  of  the  modern 
code.  *  *  *  He  was,  in  truth,  a  person  of  the  most  natural  and 
simple  manners,  and  one  in  whom  the  kindliest  charities  and 
warmest  feelings  of  human  nature  were  blended  in  the  largest 
measure  with  that  firmness  of  purpose  and  unrelaxed  sincerity 
of  principle,  in  almost  all  other  men  found  to  be  little  compatible 
with  the  attributes  of  a  gentle  nature  and  the  feelings  of  a  tender 
heart.  An  extraordinary  reach  of  thought;  great  powers  of 
attention  and  of  close  reasoning ;  a  memory  quick  and  retentive ; 
a  fancy  eminently  brilliant,  but  kept  in  perfect  discipline  by  his 
judgment  and  his  taste,  which  was  nice,  cultivated,  and  severe, 
without  any  of  the  squeamishness  so  fatal  to  vigor;  these  were 
the  qualities  which,  under  the  guidance  of  the  most  persevering 
industry,  and  with  the  stimulus  of  a  lofty  ambition,  rendered 
him  unquestionably  the  first  advocate,  and  the  most  profound 
lawyer  of  the  age  he  flourished  in."14 

This  very  able  man,  Romilly,  ''mighty  brisk  and  alert,"15  was 
often  at  Queen's  Square  Place.  He  was  "among  the  few  who 
could  ever  induce  Bentham  to  quit  his  Hermitage  and  mingle 
with  the  world.  They  met  so  frequently,  that  though  multitudes 
of  communications  passed  between  them,  they  consisted  prin- 
cipally of  short  notes,  making  appointments  at  each  other's 
houses,  or  arrangements,  almost  always  terminating  in  personal 
interviews.  Romilly 's  attachment  to  Bentham  was  most  affec- 
tionate,— his  reverence  for  his  opinions  and  character  so  great, — 
and  their  mutual  intercourse  was  to  each  a  source  of  varied  and 
virtuous  enjoyment. '  '16  Having  visited  Bentham  at  Ford  Abbey, 
Romilly  described  the  surprise  he  experienced  upon  finding  his 
friend  so  elegantly  housed.  "The  grandeur  and  stateliness  of 
the  buildings,  form  as  strange  a  contrast  to  his  philosophy,  as  the 
number  and  spaciousness  of  the  apartments,  the  hall,  the  chapel, 
the  corridors,  and  the  cloisters,  do  to  the  modesty  and  scantiness 
of  his  domestic  establishment.  We  found  him  passing  his  time, 
as  he  has  always  been  passing  it  since  I  have  known  him,  which 
is  now  more  than  thirty  years,  closely  applying  himself,  for  six 
or  eight  hours  a  day,  in  writing  upon  laws  and  legislation,  and 


14  Brougham,    Works,   Vol.   II,   pp.    363-364. 

15  Bowring,   op.   cit.,   X,   p.  457. 

16  Ibid.,  X,  p.  604. 


66        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

in  composing  his  Civil  and  Criminal  Codes:  and  spending  the 
remaining  hours  of  every  day  in  reading,  or  taking  exercise  by 
way  of  fitting  himself  for  his  labours,  or,  to  use  his  own  strangely 
invented  phraseology,  'taking  his  ante-jentacular  and  post- 
prandial walks,'  to  prepare  himself  for  his  task  of  codification. 
There  is  something  burlesque  enough  in  this  language;  but  it  is 
impossible  to  know  Bentham,  and  to  have  witnessed  his  benevol- 
ence, his  disinterestedness,  and  the  zeal  with  which  he  has  devoted 
his  whole  life  to  the  service  of  his  fellow-creatures,  without  ad- 
miring and  revering  him."17 

These  two  men,  Romilly  and  Bentham,  masters  of  the  legal  pro- 
fession, earnestly  worked  together  in  efforts  to  secure  legal  re- 
form. Bentham  freely  placed  his  "Manuscript  writings,  rough 
fragments,  printed  proofs,"  at  Romilly 's  service.  "Having 
given  to  the  matter,"  wrote  Bentham,  "that  softening  which  his 
temper  suggested  and  policy  required,  illustrating  and  enriching 
it  with  such  facts  as  his  experience  had  brought  within  his 
observation,  Romilly  made  it  up  into  one  of  those  pamphlets 
which  bear  and  do  so  much  honor  to  his  name. '  '18 

Francis  Place  (1771-1854)  may  be  numbered  among  the  close 
friends  of  Bentham.  James  Mill  introduced  the  two  men  in 
1812,19  and  in  August  of  1817  Place  became  a  disciple  of  the 
philosopher.  From  a  two  months'  visit  at  Ford  Abbey  in  that 
year  the  friendship  strengthened  so  that  after  1819  the  elder  man 
relied  more  and  more  upon  the  companionship  of  the  younger. 
Place  writes  of  Bentham  as  ' '  my  old,  very  dear  friend, ' '  and  the 
two  men  living  within  two  minutes'  walk  of  each  other  visits 
back  and  forth  occurred  often,  as  Place  writes  "each  of  our 
houses  was  as  frequently  entered  by  either  as  his  own. '  '20  Bent- 
ham 's  diary  from  1821  to  1825  makes  mention  of  many  books 
loaned  to  Place.  Place  "became  intimate  with  the  great  man; 
helped  him  in  business  affairs ;  and  was  one  of  the  disciples  em- 
ployed to  prepare  his  books  for  publication. '  '21  Writing  to  Du- 
mont  in  1817  Romilly  said  of  Place:  "He  is  self-educated,  has 
learnt  a  great  deal,  has  a  very  strong  natural  understanding, 
and  possesses  great  influence  in  Westminster,  such  influence  as 

17  Ibid.,  pp.  478-479  note. 

18  Atkinson,  Jeremy   Bentham,   p.    153. 

19  Wallas,    op.    cit.,    p.    72. 

20  Ibid.,  pp.  75,  79,  80. 

21  Stephen,  English  Utilitarians,  II,  p.  17. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    67 

almost  to  determine  the  elections  for  members  of  Parliament.  I 
need  hardly  say  that  he  is  a  great  admirer  and  disciple  of  Bent- 
ham."22 

Place,  of  humble  birth,  earnest,  energetic,  characterized  as 
"the  radical  tailor  of  Charing  Cross,"  was  of  those  who  ac- 
complished much  for  the  welfare  of  others.  "Few  men  have 
done  more  of  hte  world's  work  with  so  little  external  sign,  *  *  * 
He  was  essentially  a  public  man,  but  his  work  usually  lay  be- 
hind the  curtain.  *  *  *  He  loved  quiet  power  for  the  purpose 
of  promoting  good  ends."23  A  study  of  the  life  of  Francis 
Place  reveals  the  large  influence  he  had  in  promulgating  meas- 
ures for  improvement.  Not  in  the  halls  of  Parliament  but 
amidst  the  workingmen  with  whom  he  associated  were  his  argu- 
ments heard.  In  Bentham's  estimation,  Place,  as  early  as  1816, 
"from  extensive  knowledge  of  the  country  and  its  parties,  the 
conditions  and  wants  of  the  people,  and  from  his  own  probity 
and  mental  energy"  was  the  most  capable  of  any  living  man  to 
be  Secretary  of  State  for  the  Home  Department.24 

The  friendship  of  Bentham  and  Brougham  (1778-1868)  was 
characterized  by  warmth  and  by  criticism  of  each  for  the  benefit 
of  the  other.  Understanding  and  esteeming  one  another  as  they 
did  for  many  years  it  is  interesting  to  consider  some  of  the 
phases  in  their  intimacy.  Under  date  of  July  9,  1812,  Bentham 
wrote  of  Brougham  just  after  he  had  dined  at  Queen's  Square 
Place :  ' '  He  is  already  one  of  the  first  men  in  the  House  of  Com- 
mons, and  seems  in  a  fair  way  of  being  very  soon  universally 
acknowledged  to  be  the  very  first,  even  beyond  my  old  and  inti- 
mate friend,  Sir  Samuel  Romilly:  many,  indeed,  say  he  is  so 
now."25  At  this  time  Brougham  had  been  instrumental  in  hav- 
ing the  Orders  in  Council  revoked  with  the  thought  that  peace 
and  trade  might  be  restored  with  America,  and  England  was 
consequently  filled  "with  joy,  gladness,  and  returning  plenty." 
Letters  that  have  been  kept  for  the  year  1827  have  as  salutations 
on  Bentham's  part  "My  Dearest  Best  Boy,"  "Dear  Sweet 
Granpapa"  and  the  contents,  friendly  in  the  extreme,  bring  out 

22  Wallas,  op.  cit.,  p.  77. 

23  Ibid.,  p.  1. 

24  Ibid.,  p.  80. 

25  Bowringr,  op.  cit.,  X,  p.  471. 


68        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

Little  Poppet,"  "My  Dear  Boy;"  on  Brougham's  part  "Dear 
the  giving  and  receiving  of  advice.  Replying  to  Bentham's  offer 
of  more  advice  Brougham  said :  ' '  Many  thanks  for  the  pap,  I  am 
already  fat  on  it.  I  did  not  acknowledge  it,  being  busy  eating  it ; 
and  saying  nothing  at  meals  is  the  way  with  us  little  ones — when 
hungry. '  '26 

The  matters  of  especially  great  moment  to  these  men  were 
legal  reform  and  education.  That  Brougham  disappointed  his 
friend  and  adviser  in  the  former  is  shown  by  the  statement  under 
date  of  February  9,  1828:  "Mr.  Brougham's  mountain  is  de- 
livered, and  behold! — a  mouse.  The  wisdom  of  the  reformer 
could  not  overcome  the  craft  of  the  lawyer.  Mr.  Brougham,  af- 
ter all,  is  not  the  man  to  set  up  a  simple,  natural,  and  rational 
administration  of  justice  against  the  entanglements  and  techni- 
calities of  our  English  law  proceedings."27  In  the  field  of  ed- 
ucation, Brougham's  work  is  commendable.  His  publication  of 
Observations  on  the  Education  of  the  People  in  1825  urging  the 
necessity  of  increasing  the  knowledge  of  the  poorer  classes 
echoed  ideas  promulgated  by  Bentham  in  earlier  years.  In  1826 
he  organized  "The  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Know- 
ledge." The  attention  he  gave  to  better  scientific  education  of 
the  upper  classes  materially  aided  in  the  establishment  of  Uni- 
versity of  London  in  1828.28 

Following  his  election  to  Parliament  in  1830,  Brougham 
strongly  advocated  electoral  reform,  urging  the  extension  of  the 
franchise  to  all  housholders,  leaseholders,  and  copyholders,  and 
the  reduction  of  representation  of  each  "rotten  borough"  by 
one  member.29  His  speech  on  the  bill  which  became  the  Keform 
Bill  of  1832,  classed  as  his  masterpiece,  was  full  of  sarcasm 
against  the  Tory  lords  and  was  in  marked  contrast  to  his  attitude 
in  1818. 

Bentham  in  1828  speaking  of  Brougham  said  that  although  he 
was  insincere  it  was  always  worth  while  "to  bestow  a  day  on 
him."30  In  March  of  1830,  displeased  because  Brougham  had 
failed  to  measure  up  to  the  desired  standard,  Bentham  address- 

2«IbieL,  pp.  675-576. 

27  Ibid.,  p.  588. 

28  Oliphant,  The  Victorian  Age  of  English  Literature,  I,  p.  20. 

29  Dictionary  of  National  Biography,  V,  p.  453. 
80  Bowring,   op.  cit.,   X,  p.   671. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    69 

ed  a  letter  to  him  under  the  caption  of  "To  Master  Henry 
Brougham."  Following  a  long  introduction  in  the  query,  "When 
will  you  have  learnt  your  primer?  When  will  you  be  able  to 
spell  'greatest-happiness  principle;  non-disappointment  princi- 
ple; ends  of  justice — main  end,  giving  execution  and  effect  to 
the  substantive  branch  of  the  law ;  *  *  *  ?  "31 

The  correspondence  of  Bentham  and  Burdett  (1770-1844) 
reveals  cordial  and  helpful  friendship.  Through  it  one  gains 
first-hand  knowledge  of  the  manner  in  which  the  influence  of  the 
Hermit  Philosopher  found  its  way  into  Parliament.  Selecting 
letters  written  at  intervals  between  1811  and  1830,  one  notes  the 
forms  of  Bentham 's  salutations:  e.  g.,  May,  1811,  "Dear  Sir;" 
October,  1819,  "Much  Esteemed  Disciple;"  June,  1825,  "My 
Dear  Burdett;"  also  of  Burdett's,  February,  1818,  "My  Dear 
Sir;"  June  1825,  "My  Ever  Revered,  Beloved,  and  on  this 
Side  Idolatry,  Worshipped  Master,  Jeremy  Bentham."32  These 
salutations,  with  statements  made  by  others  who  were  contempor- 
aries, show  that  the  two  men  were,  without  question,  congenial 
and  delightful  companions.33  The  substance  of  the  letters  varies 
from  dinner  invitations  to  serious  discussions  upon  parliament- 
ary reform.3*  With  reference  to  the  latter  topic  the  friendship 
of  the  two  men  was  indeed  significant,  for  as  a  result  of  the 
letters  bearing  upon  that  discussion,  resolutions  which  Bentham 
drafted  were  presented  by  Burdett  in  Parliament.  In  the  early 
part  of  1818  Burdett  writing  to  Bentham  requested  him  to  draw 
up  a  bill  for  parliamentary  reform.35  Replying  to  this  letter 
very  soon  Bentham  expressed  frankly  his  ideas  relative  to  re- 
form and  the  necessity  of  carefully  surveying  the  task  before 
undertaking  it. 

February  25,  1818,  Henry  Bickersteth,  distinguished  friend  of 
both  Bentham  and  Burdett,  made  plain  the  state  of  affairs :  "In 
the  contemplation  of  any  improvement  in  politics  or  legislation, 
it  is  obvious  that  the  possession  of  an  instrument  of  ameliora- 
tion, sufficiently  powerful  and  enlightened,  is  a  condition  with- 
out which  no  hope  of  success  can  be  entertained;  and,  in  the 

31  Ibid.,  XI,  pp.  36-37. 

32  Ibid.,  X,  pp.  460,  508,  550,  493,  551. 

33  Ibid.,  X,  p.  493. 

3*  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  50,  491-497. 
36  Ibid.,  X,  p.  491. 


70        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

present  circumstances  of  England,  it  is  equally  clear,  that  suf- 
ficient power,  united  with  sufficient  knowledge  and  rectitude  of 
intention  can  only  be  found  in  a  radically  reformed  Parliament, 
after  some  further  time  has  been  allowed  for  public  instruction. 
If  Parliament  were  reformed  today,  we  should  have  power  and 
upright  intention;  but  unless  we  had  also  a  more  general  and 
familiar  knowledge  of  the  principles  of  legislation  than  now 
exists,  it  might  justly  be  apprehended,  that,  in  many  cases,  mere 
ignorance  of  what  was  right  to  be  done,  would  produce  the  same 
effects  which  we  now  suffer  under  the  influence  of  vice.  It  ap- 
pears therefore,  that  two  things  are  to  be  considered — parlia- 
mentary reform,  without  which  no  general  good  can  be  done ;  and 
public  instruction,  which  is  necessary,  first,  as  a  means  of  ob- 
taining reform,  and  secondly,  as  a  means  of  reaping  the  great- 
est possible  benefit  from  reform  when  obtained.  Upon  the  last, 
it  is  not  necessary  to  say  more  on  the  present  occasion. 

"Reform  can  be  peaceably  obtained  only  by  the  pressure  of 
public  opinion,  acting  with  continually  increasing  uniformity 
and  weight  in  favor  of  the  cause.  *  *  * 

''Now  England  possesses  two  distinguished  friends  of  reform, 
who,  by  their  joint  labours,  are  able  to  give  the  most  advantag- 
eous promulgation  to  the  best  possible  plan.  The  characters  of 
Mr.  Bentham  and  Sir  Francis  Burdett  are  too  well  known 
to  each  other  to  make  it  necessary  or  proper  to  say  anything  on 
that  subject.  Of  the  great  work  to  be  done,  the  one  is,  more 
than  any  other  person,  capable  of  performing  that  part  which 
is  least  congenial  to  the  habits  of  the  other;  and  their  united 
exertions  could  not  fail  to  be  eminently  beneficial.  Conceive 
a  plan  of  reform  drawn  up  by  Mr.  Bentham — the  best  possible, 
because  framed  by  the  person  best  qualified;  and  promulgated 
and  supported  by  Sir  Francis  Burdett — the  most  advantageous- 
ly, because  by  the  person  whose  every  word  becomes  universally 
notorious,  and  excites  universal  interest  and  attention;  and  the 
following  are  among  the  advantages  to  be  derived  from  it: — 

1.  A  light  held  up  for  the  guidance  of  all  friends  of  reform, 

2.  An  effectual  moral  shield  against  all  enemies.    3.     General 
confidence  that  the  plan  was  the  best  that  circumstances  would 
permit.    4.     A  suppression  of  minor  differences  of  opinion,  in 
favor  of  a  plan  so  sanctioned,  and  consequent  approaches  to 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    71 

uniformity.    5.   Petitions  for  the  adoption  of  a  particular  plan, 
which  could  not  be  reasonably  controverted. 

"Whatever  may  be  proposed,  the  parliamentary  debatese  af- 
ford the  most  extensive  means  of  publication ;  and  it  seems  prob- 
able that  the  best  mode  of  stating  a  plan  of  reform  would  be — to 
propose  a  few  short  and  simple  resolutions,  asserting  the  princi- 
pal abuses  complained  of,  and  setting  forth  the  more  general 
regulations,  constituting  the  intended  remedy — with  an  indica- 
tion that  a  bill,  or  a  complete  system  of  resolutions  or  proposi- 
tions, preliminary  to  the  enactment  of  a  law  for  the  establish- 
ment of  the  entire  remedy,  was  prepared  and  ready  to  be  pro- 
posed on  the  adoption  of  the  first  resolutions.  From  the  pro- 
posal follows  a  debate,  every  word  of  which  might  be  recorded 
and  published,  with  critical  and  explanatory  notes,  and  an  ap- 
pendix, containing  the  bill,  or  system  of  propositions,  compre- 
hending the  details  of  the  plan.  If  the  names  of  Bentham  and 
Burdett  went  together  in  this  proceeding,  we  should  not  only 
have  a  universal  notoriety,  but  all  the  reflection  and  sagacity, 
as  well  as  all  the  active  zeal  in  the  kingdom,  would  be  called  into 
immediate  action  on  this  subject ;  and  it  would  be  surprising  in- 
deed, if  every  succeeding  year  did  not  produce  an  increasing 
weight  of  petitions.  The  most  profound  philosophy  cannot  unite 
in  vain  with  the  greatest  popularity  of  the  time."36 

Upon  the  same  day  Burdett  wrote  to  Bentham  assuring  him 
that  he  would  do  all  that  he  could  to  support  in  the  House  any 
resolutions  Bentham  might  draft :  "I  shall  not  only  be  happy, 
but  proud  to  use  every  exertion  in  my  power,  to  tax  all  my 
faculties  to  the  utmost,  in  order  to  carry  into  effect  your  wishes 
upon  this  great  and  important  subject.  My  tongue  shall  speak 
as  you  do  prompt  mine  ear;  and  I  will  venture  to  promise, 
knowing  so  well  whom  I  promise,  that  I  will  refuse  attempting 
no  one  thing  that  you  shall  say  ought  to  be  done.  My  first  re- 
ward will  be  the  hope  of  doing  everlasting  good  to  my  country ; 
my  next,  and  only  inferior  to  it,  that  of  having  my  name  linked 
in  immortality  with  that  of  Jeremy  Bentham ;  and  though,  to  be 
sure,  it  is  but  a  tomtit  mounted  on  an  eagle's  wing,  the  thought 
delights  me."37  Following  further  correspondence  between 
Bentham  and  Burdett,  a  sentence  from  one  of  the  latter 's  letters 


36  Ibid.,  X,  pp.  492-493. 

37  Ibid.,  X,  p.  494. 


72        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

dated  March  10,  1818,  is:  "Please  to  transmit  the  resolutions  to 
me."38 

Burdett  presented  in  the  House  of  Commons  on  June  2,  1818, 
the  resolutions  drafted  by  Bentham.  He  added  historical  mater- 
ial to  some  of  the  twenty-six  paragraphs  that  introduced  the  six 
resolutions  and  he  re-arranged  the  order  of  the  resolutions.39 

The  six  resolutions  drafted  by  Bentham  were : 

' '  I.  That  it  is  expedient  and  necessary  to  admit  to  a  participa- 
tion in  the  election  suffrage,  all  such  persons  as,  being  of  the 
male  sex,  of  mature  age,  and  of  sound  mind,  shall,  during  a 
determinate  time  antecedent  to  the  day  of  election,  have  been 
resident  either  as  householders  or  inmates,  within  the  district  or 
place  in  which  they  are  called  upon  to  vote. 

II.  That  for  securing  the  freedom  of  election,  the  mode  of 
voting  ought  to  be  by  ballot. 

III.  That  for  more  effectually  securing  the  unity  of  will  and 
opinion,  as  between  the  people  and  their  representatives,  a  fresh 
election  of  the  members  of  this  House  ought  to  take  place,  once 
in  every  year  at  least;  saving  to  the  Crown  its  prerogrative  of 
dissolving  Parliaments  at  any  time,  and  thereupon,  after  the 
necessary  interval,  summoning  a  fresh  Parliament. 

IV.  That  the  territory  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  taken 
together  ought  to  be  divided  into  658  election  districts,  as  nearly 
equal  to  each  other  in  population  as  consistently  with  local  con- 
venience they  may  be ;  and  that  each  such  election  ought  to  re- 
turn one  representative,  and  no  more. 

V.  That  for  the  prevention  of  unnecessary  delay,  vexation, 
and  expense,  as  well  as  of  fraud,  violence,  disorder,  and  void 
elections,  the  election  in  each  district  ought  to  be  begun  and  end- 
ed on  the  same  day;40  and  that  for  this  purpose,  not  only  the 
proof  of  title,  but  also  every  operation  requiring  more  time  than 
is  necessary  for  the  delivery  of  the  vote,  ought  to  be  accomplish- 
ed on  some  day,  or  days,  antecedent  to  the  day  of  election,  and 
that  the  title  to  a  vote  should  be  the  same  for  every  elector,  and 
so  simple  as  not  to  be  subject  to  dispute. 

VI.  That  for  the  more  effectually  securing  the  attainment  of 
the  above  objects,  the  election  districts  ought  to  be  subdivided 


38  Ibid.,  X,  p.  495. 

39  Ibid.,  IV,  p.  568. 

40  Compare  the  Great  Reform  Act  of  February  fl,  1918. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    73 

into  sub-districts,  for  the  reception  of  votees,  in  such  number 
#nd  situations  as  local  convenience  may  require."41 

The  debate  in  Parliament  on  the  Bentham-Burdett  bill  was 
long  and  interesting,  being  participated  in  by  Lord  Cochrane, 
Lord  Brougham,  Mr.  Parnell,  Mr.  Canning,  Mr.  Lamb  and  Mr. 
Smith.42  The  arguments  for  and  against  the  resolutions  mani- 
fested the  views  of  the  radical  reformer,  the  moderate  reformer, 
the  Whig,  and  the  Tory.  From  Brougham 's  speech  extracts  that 
attract  attention  are:  "As  for  universal  suffrage,  of  the  doc- 
trine which  severed  the  elective  franchise  altogether  from 
property,  he  begged  leave  to  observe  that  he  never  had  at  any 
time  held  it  as  less  than  the  utter  destruction  of  the  Constitu- 
tion; he  need  not  add  that  he  had  never  given  it  the  slightest 
countenance  or  support."  And  "the  empiric  who  pretended  at 
once  to  eradicate  every  evil  in  the  system,  and  the  flatterer  who 
affected  to  believe  that  no  change  at  all  was  wanting,  were  equal- 
ly dangerous  guides  in  state  affairs,  and  that  the  one  was  as  in- 
capable of  effecting  a  salutary  reform  as  the  other."43  Refer- 
ring to  Mr.  Bentham  as  an  advocate  of  universal  manhood  suf- 
frage Lord  Brougham  said:  "He  had  the  greatest  respect  for 
that  gentleman.  There  existed  not  a  more  honest  or  ingenuous 
mind  than  he  possessed.  He  knew  no  man  who  had  passed  a 
more  honorable  and  useful  life.  Removed  from  the  turmoil  of 
active  life,  voluntarily  abandoning  both  the  emoluments  and  the 
power  which  it  held  out  to  dazzle  ambitious  and  worldly  minds ; 
he  had  passed  his  days  in  the  investigation  of  the  most  important 
truths,  and  had  reached  a  truly  venerable,  although  he  hoped  not 
an  extreme  age.  To  him  he  meant  not  to  impute  either  inade- 
quate information,  or  insufficient  industry,  or  defective  sagacity. 
But  he  hoped  he  would  not  be  deemed  disrespectful  towards  Mr. 
Bentham  if  he  said  that  his  plan  of  parliamentary  reform  show- 
ed that  he  had  dealt  more  with  books  than  with  men."44 

In  his  reply,  Burdett  said  that  Brougham's  speech  was  char- 
acterized by  eloquence  "but  was  certainly  very  far  from  being 
convincing."  It  "was  a  sort  of  salmagundi  of  sarcasm,  pane- 
gyric, and  verbosity,  of  exaggeration  and  misinterpretation,  in 


41  Bowring,  op.  cit.,   X,  p.  497. 

42  Hansard,  Parliamentary  Debates,  XXXVIII,  pp.  1150-1186. 

43  Ibid..  XXXVIII,  pp.  1168-1169. 

44  Ibid.,  XXXVIII,  p.  1164. 


74        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

which  the  words  were  more  abundant  than  the  ideas,  the  irony- 
more  conspicuous  than  the  argument."  Burdett  systematically 
answered  the  points  of  various  opponents  and  stated :  ' '  All  the 
wholesome  provisions  which  had  been  made  for  the  protection  of 
the  people,  had  been  violated,  set  at  nought,  and  buried  in  the 
corruption  of  the  House  of  Commons,  neglecting  the  voice,  and 
not  regarding  the  interests  of  the  people. ' '  He  pointed  out  par- 
ticularly that  Brougham,  claiming  to  be  friendly  to  reformr 
' '  had,  at  the  same  time,  attempted  to  render  ridiculous  the  ablest 
advocate  which  reform  had  ever  found — the  illustrious  and  un- 
rivalled Bentham.  It  was  in  vain,  however,  for  the  honorable 
and  learned  gentleman  to  attempt,  by  stale  jokes  and  misapplied 
sarcasm,  to  undervalue  the  efforts  of  a  mind  the  most  comprehen- 
sive, informed,  accurate,  acute  and  philosophical,  that  had  per- 
haps in  any  time  or  in  any  country  been  applied  to  the  subject  of 
legislation  and  which,  fortunately  for  mankind,  had  been  brought 
to  bear  upon  reform,  the  most  important  of  all  political  subjects. 
The  abilities  of  Bentham,  the  honorable  and  learned  gentleman 
could  not  dispute — his  disinterestedness  he  could  not  deny — his 
benevolence  he  could  not  but  admire — his  unremitted  labours,  he 
would  do  well  to  respect  and  not  to  attempt  to  disparage.  The 
conviction  of  such  a  mind,  after  mature  investigation,  over- 
coming preconceived  prejudice,  could  not  be  represented  as  the 
result  of  wild  and  visionary  speculation;  and  the  zealous  and 
honest  adherents  of  the  cause  of  reform  might  be  well  contented 
to  rest  the  question  on  the  foundation,  broad  and  deep,  upon 
which  Bentham  had  placed  it.  The  honorable  and  learned  gentle- 
man, therefore,  unless  he  found  himself  competent  at  least  to 
attempt  to  answer  the  reasons  of  Bentham,  ought,  for  his  own 
sake,  to  be  more  cautious  how  he  endeavored  to  misrepresent 
those  reasons,  or  to  effect,  by  misstatement,  what  he  was  unable 
to  accomplish  by  argument. '  '45 

Although  these  resolutions  did  not  pass  into  law  in  1818,  one 
does  not  find  it  difficult  to  understand  that  the  debate  and  dis- 
cusion  lent  large  influence  to  the  passage  of  the  Bill  of  1832.  Lord 
Cochrane's  statement,  opening  the  debate,  was  really  prophetic. 
"He  would  not,  he  could  not  anticipate  the  success  of  that  mo- 
tion; but  he  would  say,  as  had  been  before  said  by  the  great 


45  Ibid.,  XXXVIII,  pp.  1180,  1182-1183. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCEATIC  DEVELOPMENT    75 

Chatham,  the  father  of  Mr.  Pitt,  that  if  the  House  did  not  re- 
form itself  from  within,  it  would  be  reformed  with  a  vengeance 
from  without.  The  people  would  take  the  subject  up,  and  a 
reform  would  take  place  which  would  make  many  members  re- 
gret their  apathy  in  refusing  that  reform  which  might  be  render- 
ed efficient  and  permanent."46 

October  24,  1831,  Bentham  wrote  a  message  to  Lady  Hannah 
Elice,  in  which  he  said :  ' '  The  way  to  be  comfortable  is  to  make 
others  comfortable.  The  way  to  make  others  comfortable  is  to 
appear  to  love  them.  The  way  to  appear  to  love  them — is  to 
love  them  in  reality. '  '47  Writing  this  at  a  time  so  near  the  close 
of  his  life  he  expressed  the  dominating  factor  of  his  philosophy. 
Invitations  to  dine  at  Queen's  Square  Place  were  extended  to 
special  friends  and  were  duly  appreciated  by  the  recipients. 
February  4,  1832,  Burdett  wrote,  in  accepting  an  invitation, 
' '  Hassan,  the  camel-driver,  was  not  more  delighted  when,  travel- 
ling o'er  the  desert,  he  received  on  his  parched  lips  a  drop  of 
water  from  heaven,  than  I  am  at  receiving  your  kind,  and  al- 
low me  to  call  it,  affectionate  invitation;  for  I  value  your  good 
opinion  and  esteem  beyond  that  of  the  million  far.  I  know  no- 
thing of  the  honours  you  suppose  are  waiting  me,  and  I  assure 
you,  in  perfect  sincerity  of  heart,  I  care  nothing;  but  of  this 
and  other  more  interesting  matters  when  we  meet,  which,  God 
willing,  shall  be  Sunday,  for  I  put  aside  every  consideration  to 
have  that  pleasure. '  '48 

Always  laboring  under  the  handicap  of  shyness  Bentham  did 
not  go  often  as  a  guest  to  the  homes  of  others,  but  he  surrounded 
himself  "with  persons  whose  sympathies  were  like  his  own,  and 
whose  sympathies  he  might  direct  to  their  appropriate  objects 
in  the  active  pursuits  of  life.  *  *  *  While  he  availed  himself  of 
every  means  in  his  power  of  forming  and  cherishing  a  friendship 
with  whoever  in  any  country  indicated  remarkable  benevolence ; 
while  Howard  was  his  intimate  friend — a  friend  delighted  alike 
to  find  and  to  acknowledge  in  him  a  superior  and  beneficent 
genius ;  while  Romilly  was  not  only  the  advocate  of  his  opinions 
in  the  Senate,  but  the  affectionate  and  beloved  disciple  in  pri- 
vate; while  for  the  youth  LaFayette,  his  junior  contemporary, 


46  Ibid.,  XXXVIII,  p.  1150. 

47  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  XI,  p.  71. 

48  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  74. 


76        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

he  conceived  an  affection  which  in  the  old  age  of  both  was  beauti- 
ful for  the  freshness  and  ardour  with  which  it  continued  to  glow ; 
while  there  was  no  name  in  any  country  known  and  dear  to 
Liberty  and  Humanity  which  was  not  known  and  dear  to  him, 
and  no  person  bearing  such  a  name  that  ever  visited  England 
who  was  not  found  at  his  social  board,  he  would  hold  intercourse 
with  none  of  any  rank  or  fame  whose  distinction  was  unconnect- 
ed with  the  promotion  of  human  improvement,  and  much  less 
whose  distinction  arose  from  the  zeal  and  success  with  which 
they  laboured  to  keep  back  improvement.  That  the  current  of 
his  own  benevolence  might  experience  no  interruption  or  dis- 
turbance, he  uniformly  avoided  engaging  in  any  personal  con- 
troversy; he  contended  against  principles  and  measures,  not 
men;  and  for  the  like  reason  he  abstained  from  reading  the  at- 
tacks made  upon  himself,  so  that  the  ridicule  and  scoffing,  the 
invective  and  malignity,  with  which  he  was  sometimes  assailed, 
proved  as  harmless  to  him  as  to  his  cause.  By  the  society  he 
shunned,  as  well  as  by  that  which  he  sought,  he  endeavored  to 
render  his  social  intercourse  subservient  to  the  cultivation,  to 
the  perpetual  growth  and  activity,  of  his  benevolent  sympa- 
thies."49 

It  may  not  be  amiss  to  note  the  opinion  of  a  Spanish  admirer 
of  Bentham,  an  alcalde  of  Galicia.  Conversing  one  day  with 
George  Borrow  who  spent  the  years  from  1835  to  1840  in  Spain, 
the  alcalde  spoke  of  Bentham  as  the  "grand  Baintham, "  "the 
most  universal  genius  which  the  world  ever  produced ; — a  Solon, 
a  Plato,  and  a  Lope  de  Vega."  Borrow  said  he  had  not  thought 
Bentham  could  be  ranked  as  a  poet.  The  alcalde's  reply  was 
significant:  "How  surprising!  I  see,  indeed,  that  you  know 
nothing  of  his  writings,  though  an  Englishman.  Now,  here  am 
I,  a  simple  alcalde  of  Galicia,  yet  I  possess  all  the  writings  of 
Baintham  on  that  shelf,  and  I  study  them  day  and  night. '  '50 

An  invitation  that  Bentham  wrote  to  Talleyrand  in  Febru- 
ary, 1832,  reads  in  part :  ' '  Prince ! — Do  you  want  an  appetite  ? 
The  means  of  finding  one  for  Friday  next,  is  to  come  to  this  re- 
treat, and  take  a  Hermit 's  dinner  on  Thursday.  I  say  on  Thurs- 
day ;  for  thus,  Bowring,  whose  house  looks  upon  my  garden,  may 


49  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  92. 
50  Borrow,    The    Bible    in    Spain,    p.    289. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    77 

enjoy  your  society  for  a  few  moments ;  that  is  to  say,  after  din- 
ner; for  during  dinner  we  must  be  tete-a-tete,  which  will  be  the 
only  way  of  making  ourselves  known  to  each  other;  I  give  my 
mornings  to  nobody.  I  have  so  much  to  do,  and  so  short  a  time 
to  live,  that  I  cannot  abridge  my  working  hours."51  These  two 
men  had  not  met  for  forty  years  and  the  keen  delight  of  the 
French  diplomatist  was  manifested  in  one  sentence  of  his  reply : 
"To  dine  with  Bentham; — that  is  a  pleasure  which  tempts  me 
to  break  an  engagement  I  have  been  under  for  several  days." 
Bowring  states  that  Talleyrand  regarded  Bentham  as  "preemin- 
ently a  genius — more  entitled  to  the  name  than  any  man  he  had 
ever  known,"  and  "that  all  modern  writers,  Bentham  was  the 
one  from  whom  most  had  been  stolen — and  stolen  without  ac- 
knowledgment."  Also,  "et,  pille  de  tout  le  monde,  il  est  toujours 
riche.')5~ 

Etienne  Dumont  (1759-1829),  the  leading  disciple  of  Bentham 
and  the  great  expositor  of  Benthamic  philosophy,  was  a  Swiss 
philosopher,  scholarly,  widely  travelled,  of  superior  talents,  lib- 
eral sentiments,  and  fine  character.  He  became  tutor  to  Lord 
Lansdowne's  son  Henry  in  1785.  Esteemed  by  the  Whigs  he 
soon  became  a  close  friend  of  Romilly.  He  met  Bentham  at  Bo- 
wood  in  1788  and,  after  returning  to  England  from  France  in 
1791,  became  intimate  with  Bentham.  Romilly  showed  Dumont 
some  of  Bentham 's  manuscripts  and  Dumont  comprehending 
the  great  worth  of  them  offered  to  edit  the  writings.  Of  this 
Bentham  says  "the  plan  was  that  Dumont  should  take  my  half- 
finished  manuscripts  as  he  found  them — half  English,  half 
English-French,  and  make  what  he  could  of  them  in  Genevan- 
French,  without  giving  me  any  further  trouble  about  the  mat- 
ter. Instead  the  lazy  rogue  comes  to  me  with  everything  that 
he  writes,  and  teases  me  to  fill  up  every  gap  he  has  observed.53 
Leslie  Stephen  says  that  Dumont,  becoming  Bentham 's  most  de- 
voted disciple  labored  without  ceasing  upon  his  master's  works.54 
Abridging,  elucidating,  correcting,  simplifying,  he  was  engaged 
for  years  with  Bentham 's  ever-increasing  writings. 

The  results  of  Dumont 's  effort  received  a  currency  that  great- 


si  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  XI,  p.  75. 
51!  Ibid.,  XI,  p.  75. 

53  Ibid.,  X,  p.  313. 

54  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  187. 


78        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

ly  aided  in  spreading  the  influence  of  Bentham's  writings.  From 
time  to  time  the  following  appeared:  1802,  Traite  de  Legisla- 
tion Civile  et  Penale;  1811,  Theorie  des  Peines  et  des  Recom- 
penses; 1816,  Tactique  des  Assemblies  Legislatives;  1823, 
Preuves  Judiciaire;  1828,  Organization  Judiciaire  et  Codifica- 
tion. As  a  commentary  upon  this  work  of  master  and  disciple 
is  Macaulay  's  statement :  ' '  The  literature  of  France  has  been  to 
ours  what  Aaron  was  to  Moses,  the  expositor  of  great  truths 
which  would  else  have  perished  for  want  of  a  voice  to  utter 
them  with  distinctness.  The  relation  which  existed  between  Mr. 
Bentham  and  Dumont  is  an  exact  illustration  of  the  intellectual 
relations  in  which  the  two  countries  stand  to  each  other.  The 
great  discoveries  in  physics,  in  metaphysics,  in  political  science 
are  ours.  But  scarcely  any  foreign  nation  except  France  has  re- 
ceived them  from  us  by  direct  communication.  Isolated  by  our 
situation,  isolated  by  our  manners,  we  found  truth,  but  we  did 
not  impart  it.  France  has  been  the  interpreter  between  England 
and  mankind."55 

James  Mill  (1773-1836),  by  Leslie  Stephen  called  Bentham's 
lieutenant,56  was  of  humble  birth,  his  father  being  a  shoemaker, 
his  mother,  a  farmer's  daughter.  Educated  in  the  parish  school 
of  Logic-Perth,  the  Montrose  Academy,  and  the  Edinburgh 
University,  he  was  licensed  to  preach  in  the  Church  of  Scotland 
in  1798.  He  did  not  follow  the  work  of  a  divine  but  gave  his 
attention  to  historical,  political,  and  philosophical  lines  of  work. 
Davidson  classed  Mill  as  the  most  strenuous,  the  ablest,  and 
most  uncompromising  disciple  of  Bentham.57  These  two  phil- 
osophers became  acquainted  in  1808  and  their  acquaintance 
ripened  into  warm  and  lasting  friendship.  Mill  was  often  a  din- 
ner guest  at  Queen's  Square  Place  walking  over  from  Penton- 
ville,  but,  because  the  elder  man  wished  to  have  him  nearer,  in 
1810  Mill  moved  into  one  of  Bentham's  houses.  A  little  later 
Mill  lived  for  a  time  at  Stoke  Newington  but  in  1814  moved  into 
another  one  of  his  friend's  houses  very  near  to  Queen's  Square 
Place.  Then  the  two  lived  in  most  congenial  intimacy  for  a 
number  of  years.  For  months  at  a  time  in  successive  years,  Mill 
and  his  family  were  Bentham's  guests  at  Barrow  Green  and 

65  Macaulay,    Works,    (Edinburgh  edition)    VI,  p.   8. 

56  Stephen,  op.  cit.,  I,  p.  7. 

57  Davidson,  Political  Thought  in  England,  p.  114. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    79 

Ford  Abbey.58  Out  of  these  conditions  "the  intercourse  between 
the  two  men  gave  rise  to  a  close  friendship,  and  produced  on  the 
mind  of  the  older  philosopher  an  impress  comparable  in  ex- 
tent and  endurance,  with  that  received  more  than  a  quarter  of 
a  century  earlier  amidst  the  scenees  of  the  first  visit  to  Bo- 
wood."59 

According  to  Bowring  the  traits  of  Mill's  mind  were  "not 
amiable,  but  most  sagacious — impatient  of  contradiction  or  of 
check,  but  penetrating  and  philosophical.  No  man  ever  reason- 
ed with  stronger  logical  powers — no  man  had  ever  a  more  accur- 
ate perception  of  truth,  or  a  more  condensed  form  of  expression. 
No  man  was  ever  more  efficient  as  a  controversialist,  or  more 
felicitous  in  the  exposure  of  a  fallacy  or  a  flaw."60  Perhaps  it 
was  because  Mill  lacked  the  gentleness  and  the  sensitive  tender- 
ness of  Bentham  that  the  two  men  understood  each  other  better. 
"He  argues  against  oppression  less  because  he  loves  the  oppress- 
ed many  than  because  he  hates  the  oppressing  few.  He  fights  for 
the  people — not  that  he  cares  for  the  suffering  people,  but  that 
he  cannot  tolerate  the  suffering-creating  rulers."61  Their  warm 
friendship  did  not  prevent  Bentham  from  freely  criticising 
Mill.62 

Mill,  the  psychologist,  the  philosopher,  the  educator,  "brought 
a  vigorous  intellect  to  grasp  and  to  develop  the  doctrines  of  his 
master.  To  a  great  extent  he  popularized  them.  He  has  been 
reproached  with  having  habitually  neglected  to  acknowledge  the 
source  from  whence  he  derived  his  inspirations,  and  to  have  given 
to  the  world  as  his  own  the  valuable  matter  which  he  drew  from 
his  great  instructor.  But  the  accusation  has  been  exaggerated 
— for,  though  the  Utilitarian  Philosophy  is  the  ground  work  for 
all  the  writings  of  Mill — these  writings  are  full  of  original  views, 
and  occupy  many  portions  of  the  field  of  thought  which  had  not 
so  specially  engaged  the  attention  of  Bentham."63 

Mention  has  been  made  of  Bentham 's  attitude  relative  to 
education  for  all  classes  of  mankind.  Mill's  attitude  upon  this 
subject  was  clearly  evidenced  in  his  article  entitled  "Educa- 


r>s  Bowring,   op.   cit.,   X,   pp.   482,  483. 

59  Atkinson,  op.  cit.,  p.  154. 

co  Bowring,  op.  cit.,   X,  p.  482. 

62  Ibid.,  X,  p.  450. 

<33  Ibid.,   X,   p.   449. 


80        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

tion,"  in  which  he  defined  education  as  "the  best  employment 
of  all  the  means  which  can  be  made  use  of,  by  man,  for  render- 
ing the  human  mind  to  the  greatest  possible  degree  the  cause  of 
human  happiness.  Everything,  therefore,  which  operates,  from 
the  first  germ  of  existence  to  the  final  extinction  of  life,  in  such 
a  manner  as  to  affect  those  qualities  of  the  mind  on  which  hap- 
piness in  any  degree  depends,  comes  within  the  scope  of  the 
present  inquiry."64  In  this  essay,  Mill  clearly  showed  from  the 
standpoint  of  utility  what  a  large  factor  in  man's  well-being,, 
education  is.  Mill  taught  in  a  forceful  manner  the  ideas  of 
Bentham  relative  to  education  in  his  emphasis  of  the  happiness 
element,  not  as  a  selfish  motive,  but  as  the  means  of  general  wel- 
fare. 

Mill  was  an  enthusiastic  supporter  of  law  reform  and  his 
writings  indicate  careful  and  exhaustive  thinking  upon  it.  His 
Jurisprudence  develops  the  following  subjects:  Rights,  Pun- 
ishments for  Wrongs,  Constitution  of  Tribunals,  Mode  of  Pro- 
cedure in  the  Tribunals.  ' '  The  treatment  is  fresh  and  vigorous, 
but  does  not,  to  any  large  extent,  advance  beyond  Bentham."65 

It  is  interesting  to  note  here  that  Bentham  had  set  forth  in 
his  essay  on  ' '  Universal  and  Perpetual  Peace ' '  the  plan  of  an  in- 
ternational tribunal  for  England  and  France.66  Stating  that 
complicated  conventions  had  reached  solution  in  the  American 
Confederation,  the  German  Diet  and  the  Swiss  League,  he  ask- 
ed: "Why  should  not  the  European  fraternity  subsist  as  well 
as  the  German  Diet  or  the  Swiss  League?"  Mill  made  an  ad- 
ditional contribution  to  the  idea  of  international  jurisprudence 
by  pointing  out  that  nations  are  bound  by  the  international 
laws  as  men  are  bound  by  the  code  of  honor.  The  voice  of  the 
true  utilitarian  was  heard  in  Mill 's  advocacy  of  an  international 
tribunal.  "Given  a  properly  constituted  tribunal,  duly  repre- 
sentative of  the  nations,  dealing  impartially  with  the  cases 
brought  before  it  for  decision,  and  given  the  decisions  and  pro- 
ceedings of  the  tribunal  made  publicly  known  and  promulgated 
throughout  all  the  countries  of  the  civilized  world,  then  the  gen- 
eral utility  of  such  a  body  would  very  readily  be  seen  and  its 
power  felt.  It  would  soon  be  discovered  that  many  kinds  of 

64  Davidson,   op.  cit.,   p.   128. 

fi5  Ibid.,  p.  147. 

66  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  II,  p.  562. 


BENTHAM  AND  DEMOCRATIC  DEVELOPMENT    81 

international  disputes  would  be  more  satisfactorily  determined 
by  an  appeal  to  the  tribunal  than  by  the  hot-headed  arbitration 
of  the  sword. '  '67 

The  summum  bonum  of  Bentham's  teachings  was  seen  in  Mill's 
world- wide  view  as  mentioned  by  Davidson :  "Mill  had  a  vision 
of  the  world  at  amity,  each  subordinating  its  own  interests  to  the 
interests  of  the  whole,  and,  therefore,  each  content  to  mind  its 
own  concerns  without  unduly  interfering  with  the  concerns  of 
its  neighbors,  or  wishing  to  lay  hold  of  its  neighbor's  territory. 
The  principle  of  utilitarianism  was  supreme  with  him,  and  he 
necessarily  deprecated  anything  national  that  would  be  of  a  sel- 
fish or  individualistic  character,  anything  that  would  be  incom- 
patible with  the  interests  of  the  nations  in  general,  or,  at  least,  of 
the  civilized  nations,  which  presumably,  in  the  long  run,  means 
that  of  the  uncivilized  nations  too."68 

Lansdowne,  Romilly,  Place,  Brougham,  Burdett,  Dumont, 
Mill, — a  group  of  seven  men,  some  directly  influential  in  Parlia- 
ment, some  very  influential  outside  of  Parliament,  all  influential 
in  behalf  of  the  welfare  of  mankind,  employed  the  theories  of 
Jeremy  Bentham  in  their  plans  of  reform.  Lansdowne,  credited 
with  causing  Bentham  to  develop  his  ideas ;  Place,  classed  as  one 
who  spread  among  his  co-workers  specified  ideas  of  reform  and 
known  because  of  his  friendship  with  Bentham;  Romilly,  Bur- 
dett, Brougham  and  Mill,  listed  as  decided  up-builders  of  re- 
form strongly  in  accord  with  Bentham's  views,  accomplished 
much  definite  good  as  the  historical  records  of  the  past  century 
manifest;  and  Dumont,  selected  as  the  editor  of  some  of  Ben- 
tham's voluminous  works,  was  responsible  for  the  wide  dissem- 
ination of  those  excellent  writings.  These  men  formed  a  worthy 
septette  of  disciples  of  Bentham. 

It  is  not  possible  to  say,  with  exactness,  just  what  Bentham's 
influence,  direct  and  indirect,  has  been  in  bringing  about  many 
changes  that  have  resulted  in  man's  betterment;  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  estimate  with  precision  just  what  his  influence,  direct  and 
indirect,  has  been  in  aiding  reform  in  legislative,  judicial,  and 
social  matters;  it  is  not  possible  to  assess  the  merit  that  is  due 
to  him  through  the  employment  of  his  theories  in  the  various 
places  where  they  can  be  traced.  However,  the  thinking  mind 

67  Davidson,  op.  eit.,  p.  152. 

68  Ibid.,  p.  454. 


82        IOWA  STUDIES  IN  THE  SOCIAL  SCIENCES 

easily  comprehends  that  English  democratic  legislation,  as  it 
has  moved  forward  during  the  past  century,  is  largely  stamped 
with  his  impress.69  In  very  large  measure  the  statement  made 
by  Governor  Plumer  of  New  Hampshire  in  a  letter  written  to 
Bentham  October  2,  1817,  has  come  true:  "Persevere,  my  dear 
Sir,  in  the  great  and  important  work  in  which  you  are  so  dis- 
interestedly engaged.  The  world,  if  not  now,  at  some  future 
period,  will  profit  by  your  labours — and  though  immediate  suc- 
cess may  not  follow,  you  yourself  will  enjoy  the  noble  con- 
sciousness of  having  faithfully  served  the  best  interests  of  so- 
ciety— and  a  rational  prospect  that  sound  principles  will  even- 
tually prevail."70 


69  Burton :  Introduction  to  the  Study  of  the  Works  of  Jeremy  Bentham,  p.  3,  foot- 
note.     Among:    the    various    reforms    suggested    by    Bentham,    the    following    are    in- 
stances in  which  his  views  have  been  partially,  or  wholly  adopted  by  the  legislature : 
— reform    in    the    representative    system ;    municipal    reform    in    the    abolition    of    ex- 
clusive privileges ;   mitigation   of   the   criminal   code ;   the   abolition    of   transportation, 
and  the  adoption   of  a  system  of  prison   discipline  adapted  to   reformation,   example, 
and  economy ;   removal  of   defects   in   the  jury  system ;   abolition   of   arrest   in   mesne 
process  ;  substitution  of  an  effectual  means  of  appropriating  and  realizing  a  debtor's 
property   for   the   practice    of    imprisonment ;    abolition    of    usury    laws ;    abolition    of 
oaths  ;  abolition  of  law  taxes  and  fees  in  courts  of  justice ;  removal  of  the  exclusion- 
ary rules  in  evidence ;   repeal  of  the  test   and   corporation   acts ;   repeal  of   the   Cath- 
olic  disabilities   acts,   and   other   laws   creating  religious    inequalities ;   abolition    or   re- 
duction of  the  taxes   on   knowledge ;   a   uniform   system  of   Poor  Laws    under   central 
administration,   with    machinery   for   the   eradication    of   mendicancy    and    idleness ;    a 
system  of  training  pauper  children,  calculated  to  raise  them  from  dependent  to  pro- 
ductive members   of  society ;   saving   banks   and   friendly  societies   on   a   uniform   and 
secure  system ;  postage  cheap,  and  without  a  view  to  revenue ;   post-office  money  or- 
ders ;  a  complete  and  uniform   register  of   births,   marriages,   and  deaths ;   a   register 
of   merchant   seamen,   and   a   code   of   laws   for   their   protection ;   population    returns, 
periodical,  and  on  a  uniform  system,  with  the  names,  professions,  etc.  of  individuals  ; 
the    circulation    of   parliamentary    papers    as    a    means    of    diffusing    the    information 
contained  in  them ;  protection  to  inventions  without  the  cumbrous  machinery  of  the 
patent   laws ;   free   trade ;    national   educational   system ;    secret    ballot ;    universal    suf- 
frage  sanitary  regulations ;   practical  uniformity   of   electoral   districts,   voting  period 
limited   to   a   single   day ;    and   finally   the   promulgation    of    a    league    of    nations    for 
universal  peace. 

70  Bowring,  op.  cit.,  IV,  p.  677. 


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